


Pierce II

by trashyeggroll



Series: Worth the Fall (ThunderGrace Boxing AU) [4]
Category: Black Lightning (TV), Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boxing, Anissa is Adonis Creed, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship - Grace Choi/Anissa Pierce, F/F, Homophobic Language, Kara Danvers is Rocky Balboa, Sexist Language, Slow Burn Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor, SuperCorp, oops there's politics in my fanfic, thundergrace - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-06-25 03:47:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 69,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19737691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashyeggroll/pseuds/trashyeggroll
Summary: While navigating a growing new family and trying to keep her dominance over women's boxing, Anissa "Thunder" Pierce faces a new, powerful contender: Kara "Supergirl" Danvers, All-American golden child.





	1. The Contender

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Thanks for clicking - real quick:
> 
>  **Do you need to watch both shows to understand this?** Not necessarily! Some character dynamics may make more sense if you do, but I tried to write it so you don't need to.
> 
>  **Do you need to read the first two installments to understand this?** I also tried to write this so it's not necessary, but there's bound to be offhand callbacks that might not register if you haven't.
> 
>  **Do you need to watch any of the Rocky or Creed movies to understand this** Negative. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

**Prologue**

_ KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI _

_ “That’s the bell to kick us off for Round 2 of a scheduled twelve, and Supergirl comes out of her corner hot. This kid is hungry tonight,”  _ booms a baritone voice over the auditorium, accented by the sounds of gloves hitting flesh and bone. 

It’s not a headline-grabbing match, but the seats around the red, white, and blue boxing ring illuminated by stadium lights are more than half-full, meaning the cut of the ticket sales for the fighters currently moving around said ring should be fairly respectable. The winner’s pot isn’t anything special, but profit is profit. 

Well, in the case of Kara “Supergirl” Danvers, any such proceeds would first go to her manager, Lex Luthor, CEO and Commissioner of L-Corp. He happened to be in town for a meeting with BlueCross/BlueShield to negotiate his employees’ health plans, and thus decided to take the rare opportunity to watch his prize fighter perform live from a ringside seat. At best, he would have a pleasant and mildly  _ enriching _ night out, and at worst, he’d see if he was wasting his time and money on the Danvers girl, who’s now getting a pep talk from her trainer as the seconds wind down to the start of the third round. 

The girl-next-door blonde had come to L-Corp headquarters begging to speak to Lex two years ago, throwing around his sister’s name like it would get her somewhere—but it was what Lex knew of her burgeoning boxing career, and the meager price she asked in return, that had him walking out of his office and telling the burly security guards to put the struggling girl down.

“What can I do for you, Miss Danvers? I caught a little bit of it from in here,” he’d opened as they sat in his massive office, a three-foot mahogany desk between them.

“My parents—your bank has their farm loan,” Kara had halting explained with a nervous tap on the frame of her plastic glasses. They did nothing for her face, in Lex’s opinion. 

Though Lex was already familiar with the Danvers’ family struggles, Smallville being  _ small,  _ he let Kara ramble on about the situation as he parsed through the important details. 

Jeremiah Danvers had dropped dead in his fields of a heart attack nearly five years earlier, resulting in the eldest sister, Alex Danvers, shipping off to some godforsaken country on a secret mission, having yet to return, and Eliza and Kara Danvers had done their best to keep things going—but they were five months behind on payments, with no relief in the foreseeable future. 

The balance? $303,517.93. L-Corp could easily write off the amount, but Lex Luthor hadn’t been made CEO and Commissioner for his mercy. 

In exchange for control over Kara Danvers’ boxing career—percentages on winnings, sponsorships, merchandise, appearance fees, and literally any other source of income—the Danvers farm would be safe indefinitely, without accruing interest, until Kara and Eliza could afford the lump sum payment. With the modest salary he provided the boxer in return and their current rate of losses on other operational bills and fees, that would take a very, very long time. 

Compared to L-Corp’s sprawling profits, Supergirl isn’t a cash cow by any means, not  _ yet, _ but she  _ is _ a perfect PR surrogate for the image Lex wants associated with his family’s business. Long, wavy blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and a smile so endearing even Lex can appreciate it—but she’s also wholesome and as American as apple pie, having grown up exploring soybean fields on her family’s farm and raising prize-winning calves for her local FFA. She’s cut, but not  _ too _ muscular (as to not be off putting to their target demographic), with broad shoulders and a slender waist. 

That’s all well and good for the photo and commercial campaigns, but the cherry on top, what makes Lex’s lip curl into a pleased grin, is that Kara Danvers can  _ fight.  _

Although she’s still somehow ranked #8 fighter in their weight class, Lana Lang is a boxer on the outs; she’d been a contender maybe six years ago, but time and a couple bad hits had taken their toll, and like so many before her, Lang’s likely going to retire without ever having reached her dreams of world championships. At this particular moment, it even seems like Kara Danvers could be the one to put the final nail in the coffin, so to speak, as the women dance around the ring and the crowd jeers and roars. 

_ “Round Five, and Lana Lang looks tired out there, but Danvers might as well be going for a light jog, and man-o-man is this girl laser-focused.” _

Supergirl’s right hook hits so hard Lang’s torso pitches backward after almost every shot she takes, but Danvers is keeping the pace of the fight slow, letting her opponent regain her footing after bouncing off the ropes. The blonde could easily win by points at this rate, that much was clear, but Supergirl is always looking for a straight TKO, and right now, the older boxer is giving her the space to find it. She stalks Lang into a corner and easily ducks a few jabs, then seems to find what she needs and explodes with her left directly into the other fighter's ribcage. There’s an audible  _ crack, _ and Lang collapses for the ten count, groaning into the mat. 

As a medic ducks into the ring, Kara Danvers isn’t a showboater; the fifth round knockout speaks for itself. She stands with a sort of quiet intensity in the middle of the mat as the ref holds up her triumphant glove, and Lex follows the fixed point those blue eyes can’t seem to leave, even as Supergirl’s team crowds her for congratulations.

His “wholesome” fighter is quite certainly looking at his younger sister, Lena Luthor, also in town for the healthcare meeting, much to Lex’s annoyance. Half-sister, to be specific about it, but they were seemingly made from entirely different cloths. Lena was a delicate lace, beautiful, but not all that appropriate for business meetings and far too soft. Her shareholdings gave her some manner of power in the family company, though, so he just grimaced through it most days. She had  _ begged _ him to the point of embarrassment to just pay off the Danvers’ debt, but luckily, she didn’t have  _ that _ much power at L-Corp. 

Smiling fading, Lex flicks a speck of confetti off of his suit jacket and makes a mental note to promote his sister to their Central office at the next opportunity. As he leaves the auditorium, the announcer’s gushing into the mic over the muted roar of the exiting crowds. 

_ “Ladies and gentlemen, we are witnessing the birth of a star here tonight. Kara Danvers, all-American, just showed us why they’re calling her the Girl of Steel.” _

**Chapter 01: The Contender**

_ LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA _

Despite a narrow loss to the outgoing world champion, Anissa “Thunder” Pierce has to bank ten more wins over two years before the new title holder’s team will even  _ talk _ about a challenge bout. They go back and forth for six weeks in agonizing written correspondence, until Anissa grabs the printed paper one day and writes underneath all the contract legalese:  _ Put up for my Stang and your belt, or you too scared? _

And the reigning #1 ranked pound-for-pound female boxer in the world, Emily “Looker” Briggs, accepts the fight the next week. The letter Team Thunder gets back includes a handwritten, silver gel pen note back:  _ You mean my Stang. _ The underlined word “my” has a heart drawn around it. Game on. 

The difference between Anissa’s life the first time she took one of Looker’s punches and now is more even than a night and day change; it’s a different version of reality. Then, she’d been an arrogant upstart, running on rage and with a seemingly permanent grudge against… pretty much everything. Now? She’s 11-1, 26-1 with her pro-am record, and ranked as the #4 pound for pound female boxer in the world.

More importantly, she has a wife and a  _ four-year-old, _ a mortgaged house in the French Quarter, and a steady stream of sponsors. She had stability, consistency, and almost everything she could want out of life. 

Except a champion’s belt. 

So with every win, personally and professionally, she has just that much more to lose—and this, the world title, is what she’s wanted since the first time she watched her late father, Jefferson Pierce, throw a punch in a grainy YouTube video. 

She hasn’t even hit the canvas since Tori “Killer” Whale knocked her out cold in her final fight, but facing Looker, that again becomes a very real possibility. 

The differences between her life then and now are also glaringly obvious in the locker room before the fight, too. Where she used to get ignored right up until the bell, now camera crews snap photos of her warming up, until Padman clears them out so she can  _ actually _ concentrate on warming up, which includes a slew of pre-fight rituals she’s developed over the years.

Her stepdaughter, the aforementioned four-year-old Hanh, doesn’t  _ watch _ the matches of course, but she’s usually nearby, tucked in a back room with Jen or Malia’s daughter and a pad of paper or coloring book and markers, and Anissa always gives her a hug and a kiss before stepping into the ring. 

Of course, Grace gets kisses too, but she’s ever so slowly become a more important figure in the locker room, too, outside of supportive spouse.

Like right now, as she’s standing still in front of Anissa, as sturdy as a mountain against the rolling waves of her nervous energy. She’s wearing a white, long-sleeve button-down and black skinny jeans, her black “Team Thunder” bomber jacket sitting on a bench nearby. Grace could be wearing a paper bag and still be the most gorgeous woman in the world to her wife. 

Anissa’s staring straight into her brown eyes while they go through their typical process. 

“It’s just another fight,” the artist is saying in a voice pitched low, just for them. “How’re you feeling?”

“I’m good,” she murmurs with a half-jab into the air between them. “I got this.”

“She’s not the same fighter from before. You’re not the same fighter. She’s on her downswing, and you’re coming up. This is your title now, babe. It’s yours.” 

Anissa nods enthusiastically at the thought, but she’s trying not to get carried away with the confidence. It doesn’t  _ feel _ like as big of a fight as when she faced Tori Whale, and that’s what’s worrying her the most. Looker may be approaching her retirement age in this sport, but that level of experience is not to be underestimated, and complacency could end in disaster. A fighter can be forgiven for losing a title match early in her career—but twice, and she might as well retire, in her opinion. 

Grace kisses her forehead and says near her ear:  _ “Bạn em cần đi ị?”  _

The boxer almost chokes, but then chuckles for the first time since they walked into the arena, and it loosens some of the tension in her spine. She glances from side to side before she mutters back, “Yeah…”

Smirking, the artist calls to Malia that Anissa’s ready for her gloves. 

“What was that about?” asks her sparring partner, grinning as she starts wrapping the contender’s knuckles. “Little promise for later?”

“Uh, hard no. She asked me if I shit yet.”

Malia’s cackle bounces cheerily off the cement-block walls, and Grace winks at her wife as she leaves for her ringside seat.

“How you feelin’ tonight?” continues the older fighter after some quiet minutes of working. “You awake?”

“I’m awake. It’s just weird, y’know—it doesn’t feel like a champ fight.”

“On the one hand, yeah, this  _ is _ just another fight, and you fucking got this. On the other… Looker’s gonna throttle you within an inch of your life if you walk in there unprepared.”

“I’m ready. I am.” 

Malia doesn’t quite seem convinced, and she stops to speak quietly with Anissa’s trainer, Peter Gambi, before leaving the private room. 

Gambi’s bushy gray eyebrows are raised when he approaches. “What’d you say to her?”

“Nothin’. I’m just… kinda meh.”

“Kinda meh,” repeats Gambi as if it’s some grave confessions, and his mustache twitches. “What’s the problem?”

The boxer lets out a long, slow breath. “Just.. Meh.”

“Eloquent. Walk with me.” 

She knows exactly what’s wrong, but not quite how to get out the words to explain it to him. Ever since the Whale fight, Anissa’s faced plenty of opponents with puffed chests and stories of personal triumphs and tribulations, but nothing’s been nearly as meaningful (or melodramatic) in comparison to that night. The secret daughter of Jefferson Pierce, boxing royalty, rocketing from obscurity to the world stage in a make-or-break battle before Whale went to prison, a de facto end to an undefeated record. 

For  _ this _ fight, the media projections suggest there’ll be around half the live audience as her last world title match, as if to drive the point home. It’s not that she wants attention or fame (and has worked carefully with her NOLA locals on establishing boundaries), but it’s the  _ thrill _ of it. The electricity in the room, the hype building and building to the big day. The feeling is like she’s chasing a high. 

And Gambi, having been in multiple matches as contender or defending champion himself, seems to sense something along those lines. They’ve only been a part of each other’s lives for the last three years, but Peter Gambi and Anissa Washington-Choi have spent countless hours together, training, talking, learning to work with each other, to communicate effectively. Besides her family, Gambi knows her better than anyone else. 

The trainer walks shoulder to shoulder with his fighter as they head out of the locker room and down the dimly lit tunnel leading to Anissa’s second shot at the world title. 

“You’re waiting for someone to tell you the meaning of this fight,” he’s saying quietly, when they pause in the dark to wait for their entry cue. “But nobody can give you that but you, kid. We all know you’re a force to be reckoned with, we all know there’s a significant chance you win this time.”

Anissa sighs, closing her eyes, but nods when he puts his hands on her shoulders.

“Whale was about proving you deserve a seat at the table, win or lose. And you got your seat. So this?  _ This _ is about winning. You don’t have anythingx to prove to anyone—so ask yourself, why are you even here?”

She opens her eyes again. “Because I want it.”

“Then go get it, kid.” 

Looker, true to her saccharine nickname, is done up in her preferred heavy match makeup, a bright red lip and winged eyeliner, and a prim, curly blonde ponytail with a blue ribbon like she’s about to enter a cheerleading competition and not a boxing match. In a way, it reminds Anissa to ignore all that pageantry stuff—underneath that WASP Next Door veneer is an undefeated world champion. A member of Looker’s entourage comes out holding up Anissa’s Mustang keys like you would a champion belt, and all of a sudden she’s  _ very _ ready for the fight.

“Good evening ladies,” says the ref when they meet in the center of the ring. “I discussed the rules with both fighters in the locker room, do you understand them?”

“Yeah,” says Anissa quickly, and Looker nods. Over the blonde’s shoulder, her trainer, Latavius “Lala” Johnson, is smirking at her, and he mouths what looks like  _ Hey Princess _ while the ref keeps rattling off her spiel. 

Even if the world at large doesn’t find much drama in the  _ Briggs v Pierce _ fight, Anissa’s quickly finding all the plot points that she needs. She hasn’t been back to the Green Light Gym since moving to New Orleans, and she sometimes dreamed of a world where Lala brokenly admitted that he regretted his past denial of her talent, but… Beating the daylights out of his champ right in front of him was going to be so, so much sweeter.

“Let’s have a clean fight, follow my directions and protect yourselves. We’re making history tonight ladies, so let’s try to be remembered fondly—to your corners. We’re ten seconds out.” 

By the fourth round of a scheduled fifteen, the fight’s in full swing, so to speak—they’ve gone through the initial hesitations and tests, and now they’re starting to see each other’s cracks. Anissa sees that Looker is losing track of her when the younger fighter zips in close: Briggs has always been a somewhat short competitor compared to the rest of their field, accustomed to long-armed upstarts trying to pummel her with superior reach, not Thunder’s close-range strategy. Sloppy.

And Anissa punishes her for it, rattling her skull with short uppercuts, again and again, driving the champion back against the ropes until the bell rings. 

“Get that title ready for me,” snarls the younger fighter as she heads to her corner. “Belt and the car.”

“Come and take them,” is Briggs’ curt reply. 

The quick rest between rounds seems to wake Looker up for the fifth, and Anissa has to check herself when she almost gets taken down by a hard left cross that makes the crowd go  _ oooh. _ If she’s being completely honest, it  _ should have _ knocked her out, based on the punches she’s taken from Looker before—but this is years later, and that strike just isn’t what it used to be.  _ If that’s the best she’s got, it’s time to end this.  _

So once the cobwebs clear, Anissa goes for gold. She takes some heavy hits, but dominates the pace of the fight, breaking Looker’s guard again and again until she sees the weakness in the blonde’s arms, her gloves sagging. The contender ducks in close, shrugging off a glancing blow to her shoulder, and hits the champ with a clean left that makes her stumble. It’s a chase from there, Briggs’ eyes growing panicked as she tries to slow it down by backing off—until Anissa walks her into a corner late in the round. 

Jab, jab, cross, hook: Each blow lands flush against Looker’s cheek, and then the world champion takes a tumble.

While the ref counts, Anissa doesn’t even look at Briggs—she keeps her eyes on the trainer who’d refused to work with her when she was a no one, who’d taken every opportunity to discourage and bully her. Lala’s got a huge vein about to burst out of his forehead, and she shouts at him to get her keys while the official says  _ “six”. _

She  _ knew _ it was over as soon as Looker fell, but Anissa’s still struck numb when the ref calls the match for Thunder, holding her arm up while flashbulbs erupt, like a lightning storm. A fifth round knockout against the “world champion.” Somehow, somewhere deep in her chest and despite her personal beefs with Briggs and Lala, the win  _ still _ feels no different than an exhibition fight—all show, no substance. She’s a bit injured, sure, but barely toeing the edge of exhaustion. 

Her team, for their part, is ecstatic, and she’s jostled by their incomprehensible congratulations until Grace appears out of the fog, and at her bright smile, Anissa allows herself a smile, too.

“Baby, do you know what you just did?” gasps the artist, gripping her face with both hands, and the completely innocent touch yanks Anissa into the moment like a flipped switch. “Do you have any idea what just happened?”

Finally, Anissa pulls her wife close for a kiss—another fight day ritual—and then hugs her tight. “I’m the fucking champ.”

“World champion, Anissa Pierce,” confirms Grace, laughing as Malia almost knocks them over for a tight group hug. 

_ I’m the fucking champ. _

_ SMALLVILLE, KANSAS _

At the Wild Coyote Bar on the southern edge of Smallville proper, Kara Danvers sits on a rusted metal stool, watching coverage of Anissa Pierce’s world championship win on the establishment’s one big flatscreen. The commentators are falling over themselves complimenting the new title holder and her meteoric rise to the top of the food chain. Sure, Thunder is a world class fighter, but Kara’s watched her bouts closely, and in her estimation, Pierce has been slowly getting worse than she was against Whale, the curse of being dragged down by subpar opponents, including Looker. Sloppier, less  _ in it. _

“She’s a gimmick,” grumbles her trainer, Lar Gand, from the stool next to her. “Between her dad’s big mouth, Gambi’s dying attempt to be remembered, and all the dyke stuff, she’s there for show and politics. You would’ve taken down Briggs in round two of that fight, easy.”

Kara gulps the rest of her whiskey—not her favorite, but it’s what Lar buys—and nods along with his assessments as she watches Pierce’s facial expressions in the moments after the fight. She almost looks nonplussed, standing stoically amidst her celebrating team, until her wife ducks the ropes and kisses her under the lights. After that, Thunder’s all smiles and raised gloves, victorious roar and jumping on the corner ropes.

“Embarrassing,” mutters Lar into his empty glass. “Nobody has any humility in this sport anymore.” 

The bartender sets two more drinks in front of them, and Kara touches her glasses as she tears her attention from the TV. With longish, dark blonde hair and royal blue eyes, Lar is a big man, former heavyweight world champ, and undergirding this entire conversation is the fact that he’s the very boxer who delivered  _ Jefferson  _ “Black Lightning” Pierce’s final, fatal punch, taking away Anissa’s father before they ever met.

Watching Black Lightning’s daughter reignite the country’s fawning for him has steadily made Lar sharper around the edges, less forgiving of mistakes during their workouts. The last year of training has been more intense than anything she’s done before, but there’s no denying the results—Kara Danvers is 8-0 in the professional circuit, all wins by knockout, only one weight class above The Anissa Pierce. 

“Thunder’s a mean machine, Lar,” says the bartender, smirking at them. “Kara’s the girl next door. I wouldn’t put ‘em in the ring together.”

“Kara’s  _ the heart _ of this country. Strong, but  _ traditional _ and humble,” snaps the trainer. It’s one of his favorite PR lines. “And she’s gonna knock that bitch out soon, without all the rest of that bullshit. It’s just theatrics. It’s boxing, not CNN.”

The repeated vulgarity and generally nonsensical comments are familiar signals that it’s time to start convincing Lar to wind the night down, and she quietly texts his son, Mike, to come to the bar. 

By the time he arrives, Kara’s had to pull Lar away from punching the bartender more than once, and they’re on the verge of getting muscled out by the bouncers. A normal Wednesday night for them, really. 

Mike, who has none too subtly been trying to woo her since middle school, pulls up to the edge of the circle of light from the front of the bar. He’s got a cheesy smile plastered across his face even as he helps load his dad into the bed of their old Chevy truck, and of course he lingers by the driver’s side door for some frankly unwelcome conversation. 

“You look real good,” he says at some point, giving her an up-and-down that makes her skin crawl. “Dad’s been working you like nothing I’ve seen before—some of his old Soviet stuff, yeah?”

“A lot of it,” agrees Kara. Mike himself is your standard, “corn-fed” Kansan boy, cornhusker hat, perpetual hoodie, cargo jeans and work boots. He has a scruffy brown beard that sometimes makes Kara itchy just looking at it.

“Never been a fighter like him,” he replies wistfully, even as his dad’s passed out drunk behind him. “All that stuff he teaches you? Way different than what these urban guys know.”

“Sure, yeah. It’s cool. Anyway, I better get home—kinda late.” The boxer adjusts her glasses again, and she has to suppress a sigh of relief when Mike agrees and gets back in his truck. 

“Good night, gorgeous,” he calls as a dust cloud rises behind the vehicle’s tail lights. 

In the quiet of the warm night air, Kara takes a few beats to shake off the unsettled feeling in her stomach before turning towards her car. She’s just about got her keys in the door when a voice interrupts her, and she drops them in alarm instead.

“That was  _ painful.” _

Kara recognizes it immediately, and heat unfurls in her chest as local heiress and her friend, Lena Luthor, appears from around her Range Rover. The Luthor family owns a massive network of commercial meat processing plants and other businesses that help support their goal: make as much money as possible, as quickly as possible. Consumer research, banking and finance, industrial production, chemical plants—and their equally massive fortune has made them the de facto charity in Smallville.

Most importantly, Lena’s older brother, Lex, is the purse behind her burgeoning career, in exchange for a stake in all of her boxing-related income. 

“It’s as if Mike graduated high school, and then immediately went into emotional maturity stasis,” continues the velvet-toned Luthor, who Kara sees is looking unusually casual in a black hoodie and black skinny jeans that hug her plush lower extremities in a way Kara can see clearly, even in the dim parking lot light. 

That’s… just hard to miss, for anyone, the boxer reasons as she clears her throat. “Hey… friend. Coming or going?”

Lena’s green eyes are watching her carefully, but her soft expression is mostly inscrutable as she stops a few feet away from the fighter. “Coming. Sam’s gonna meet me in a few minutes. Just wanted to make sure Mike didn’t throw you in the back, too.”

“I think he wanted to,” jokes Kara weakly, and she touches her glasses before meeting her friend’s emerald gaze. “I’m… I should go. Training every day now.”

“I know. Lex says you’re the next big thing.” Lena tilts her head and gives a curious sort of smile. “You okay to drive? I haven’t gotten started yet, I could take you.”

“No, no, I’m fine,” insists the fighter, a little more forcefully than she’d truly intended. The thought made her belly clench and twist with nerves, and she isn’t in a mood to further explore or exacerbate that feeling. “Really, I’m good, Lena, thank you. Have fun in there.”

Though she does look a bit hurt, Lena nods, and then leaves towards the front door. Once in her car, Kara spends a couple minutes breathing hard and smashing her palms against the steering wheel, and then the night’s tension and frustration finally melts away, but she’s scratched a groove out of the vinyl that’ll annoy her until the old Focus finally dies.

_ NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA _

As the months tick by, Anissa watches the boxing world’s news carefully. The ballgame’s changed, as far as her career goes—she’s in the castle looking down, untouchable by title until she sees a challenger who’s too loud to ignore. It’s a less stressful way to live, less fights, more sponsors, but it also makes it that much harder to stay in peak condition. There’s no big baddie looming in the distance, and the motivation to run ten miles instead of eight just isn’t there. 

On top of that, she’s got a house full of much more fun distractions. For her sophomore year of college, and to save up for a year abroad, her younger sister Jen’s moved into Anissa and Grace’s house. It’s an old, classic New Orleans structure with a wraparound porch and bright purple paint on the exterior, and it’s big enough that Jen can do her own thing in her room downstairs, far, far away from Hanh’s bedroom and the master upstairs. They’d gotten married in the backyard, leaving the vine-overgrown arch from the ceremony in place. 

She often sees Jen’s boyfriend, Khalil Payne, dressed for classes and inevitably brewing coffee, when she enters the open kitchen in the mornings. Today, the quiet young man even brought his own bag of Java beans to share, nudging it towards her with his usual somewhat shy smile. 

Anissa turns on the TV in the connected living room and gets started on a pancake breakfast. 

_ “...arrival of Kara Danvers, who’s been laser-cutting through the competition to a 14-0 record at what seems like superspeed.” _

_ “I mean, let’s just watch this first round TKO she had with former contender, Tatsu ‘Katana’ Yamashiro. Bam, boom, and Katana goes down, she does not get back up, and I don’t even know what to say except the raw power behind this girl is unlike anything we’ve seen in women’s boxing. I think she just ended Yamashiro’s whole career.” _

Khalil turns from the screen, raising an eyebrow at the boxer. “That sounds like fightin’ words to me.”

“‘Fightin’ words’, please,” mocks Anissa, gently. “Don’t you trackstars get disqualified for getting too close to each other’s feet?”

“I think that’s the Kentucky Derby,” he replies completely seriously, and the boxer has the irrational urge to ‘boop’ his nose for that.

Instead, she looks back down at her mixing bowl and says stiffly, “She’s just the new hotness. There’s always gonna be someone new.”

“Yeah, but she’s like—do you think she’ll challenge you?”

“That’s what being the champ’s about. But what d’you mean, she’s ‘like’ what?” 

“I dunno, just strong.” Khalil shrugs, holding up his hands helplessly. “You know they’re calling her Supergirl?”

“Oh please, just because she’s from the same town and has the same agent as-as Clark Kent did when he started? That doesn’t make her the ‘super’ anything. My agent works with Tiger Woods, does that make me a golfer?” 

To his credit, the young man across the granite kitchen island just gives her an unimpressed, accusatory look. 

“No, that’s not the same—Black Lightning is my father. Way different.”

“Fine, fine,” he laughs, ducking the raspberry she launches in his direction. “What I meant was, Danvers got game. I’ve watched enough of your fights, coupla hers, and nobody’s ever moved like this one. Nobody. She’s like one of them battlebots. I’m not saying she’s better than you, but sis… you’re  _ gonna _ fight her one day.” 

Anissa gets so distracted, not so much by the words, but by the  _ way _ that he’s talking about the rising boxer that she doesn’t answer, her eyes glued to her pancake batter as the name  _ Kara Danvers _ takes root in her mind. It’s almost how she imagined people talking about her, when  _ she _ was an upstart with promise not too long ago, and Anissa doesn’t appreciate the unbalanced feeling the realization leaves in her stomach. Because at the end of Anissa’s story, she became world champ. But there can be only one. 

_ “After being orphaned young, Kara was adopted in the by Jeremiah and Eliza Danvers, farmers in Kansas. She’s toughened up all her life by tossing bales of hay and wrasslin’ cows, plus a deployment overseas as part of the Army Reserve.” _

_ “Let’s not forget, her trainer is the infamous Lar Grand, the man who was banned from competing as a professional boxer after too many illegal hits and two dead opponents. One of those opponents was a name we’ve been hearing a lot lately: Jefferson Pierce.” _

As soon as the commentator says  _ that name,  _ Anissa abandons her almost-pancakes, and then she’s standing directly underneath the wall-mounted TV.  _ Lar Gand. _ His portrait hovers over footage of an old fight, and just the familiar framing of the scene makes her throat tighten.

This was a video she’d watched only once in her life, in a dark moment of self-loathing, and she’d thrown up in her bedroom trashcan after doing it. Gand, landing punch after punch on her father’s head, knocking him around the ring as Black Lightning slowed and slowed. Although the broadcast doesn’t show the punch that killed her father, which she saw in the online version, the news  _ does  _ show his lifeless body on the mat as Lar Gand paces the ring, crowing his victory and  _ smiling. _ A younger Peter Gambi is bent over Jefferson’s form, a hand to his forehead and a devastated expression on his face. 

And  _ Gand _ is the man behind the fighter who could one day come for her crown. 

“You okay?” asks Khalil from behind her, his voice hesitant. “Anissa?”

When she turns, Anissa’s stomach settles, and she gives him a firm nod. “If she challenges me, I’ll knock her ass out, in front of the whole world.”

Heedless of Anissa’s reaction to the ESPN package, the host moves on to talk of whether the Lakers can attract any more stars with LeBron on the roster. She goes back to her pancakes, silently stewing and working on autopilot while Khalil scrolls on his phone, and the boxer’s so lost in thoughts of  _ Jefferson _ and  _ Danvers _ that she almost drops her spatula when a small hand tugs the hem of her shirt. 

Four-year-old Hanh, her stepdaughter, looks back up at her curiously and with a hint of frustration, like perhaps she’s been trying to get Anissa’s attention for awhile. “Can I help with pancakes?”

“If you go get your step, then of course.” 

All that boxing mess fades as she watches the kid dutifully waddle over to pick up a bright purple stepstool, only about six inches tall, from its spot against the wall near the hallway, and somewhat belaboredly hauls it back. Like her Aunt Jen, she’s got a flair for dramatics.

By the time Hanh clambers onto her stool, Anissa’s almost done with the batter, and Khalil’s digging into two perfect cakes, but Hanh looks like she’s competing in the Master Chef kitchen, black brows furrowed as she pours the last of the batter into two-and-a-half misshapen ovals. Anissa offers more structured help during the flipping portion of the cook, her hand curled around Hanh’s tiny one on the spatula. 

“Yo, Peanut,” calls Khalil when they finally get the abstract cooking pieces onto a plate. “Those look  _ so _ good. You gonna sit by me?”

With a delighted smile, Hanh agrees, and she manages to climb onto the tall barstool as Anissa sets her plate in front of her, and then gives another to Khalil. Hanh can’t be trusted with a whole bottle of syrup, so the boxer pre-applied it for her, but she does leave a pad of butter for the kid to clumsily spread around with a kitchen knife. 

Anissa leans against the counter on the other side of the island, watching the wholesome conversation between those two and feeling a syrupy, seeping warmth in her chest. She’s never been so content and near-disgustingly happy before, but there’s a smaller part of her, hiding in the deep of her mind, that whispers anxieties about what big bad thing is coming to take it all away, like how her life seemed to go when she was young. 

It takes Grace’s sleepy expression as she pads into the kitchen to chase away that cold sliver of a thought, especially when her wife leans in for a lazy kiss and puts her arms around her waist.

With Hanh heading to a half-day pre-K in the fall, plus their current financial stability between Grace’s contracts and Anissa’s sponsorships, the two had come to an easy decision to have a second baby, their first together. The harder part had been all of the extra work two women needed to do, deciding on things like whether to use a Known or Anonymous Donor registry, or to ask someone they knew, and depending on that, how best to get the necessary “supplies”. 

“Look at this one,” Grace had said over and over as they picked through binders of profiles. “He’s an astrophysicist who is ‘very close to his mother’, and the nursing staff said his closest celebrity lookalike is Idris Elba.”

Anissa had pinned her with a look, tapping her finger on the medical information in the profile, always her first priority. “Genetic testing suggests he’s a lupus carrier, and his father had Alzheimer’s.”

Ultimately, they went: a) anonymous donor, with the option for the child to contact the father after they turned 18, b) a registry that allowed them to pay extra to see pictures of the donors’ other children, voluntarily provided by fellow parents, and c) they paid to have the sperm transported in a refrigerated unit from Atlanta to their OB/GYN in New Orleans. Their donor of choice was a high school principle described as “an even more handsome Carl Weathers in his prime”, with what Anissa deemed an acceptable family and medical history. She feels a connection to his understated and humorous biography, and the pictures of his other children show bone structure and smiles that seem  _ right, _ somehow. They’d tried just once so far, just the two of them at home, but Grace had gotten her period a few days ago, and so the saga continued.

“Did you let her make those atrocities?” whispers Grace against her cheek. 

“She can pour the batter, and it’s cooked, I swear. Who am I to stifle her artistic expression?”

“Somehow, I suspect she didn’t inherit that particular gene.” Grace kisses the corner of her mouth and pulls away to eat, yawning indulgently. 

_ “Mẹ, _ did you see what I made?” chirps Hanh, precariously tilting her plate up on one side. “Mama helped.”

“Mhmm,” hums Grace as she sits next to their daughter, nodding her greeting to Khalil. “Beautiful.”

_ SMALLVILLE, KANSAS _

July Fourth in Smallville is a big deal. The locals are of a particular USA-loving sort, and the day includes a parade through the town’s half-mile main street, kicking off events including live music, a town barbeque, a ceremony honoring local veterans, and on and on. 

For Kara, that means a lot of facetime, hand-shaking and sitting in the bed of a Ram 2500 bedecked in red, white, and blue, as it slowly rolls behind a giant bald eagle float and in front of the sheriff in his Mustang convertible. She isn’t sure anyone in town other than Lar and Mike  _ actually _ watches women’s boxing, but L-Corp’s PR team has pushed her story pretty aggressively, like a regional commercial where she endorsed a chain of sports supply stores, and she’s lived in Smallville all her life—so everyone knows Kara Danvers.

This year, Lex has her wearing a red and blue dress, modest, a little too puffy for her tastes, with white shoes, proving he had never tried to keep such things clean in his life. She had been on board with the outfit for the parade—floats are dramatic, anyway—and then she’d found out that that was supposed to be her attire  _ all day… _ but per her contract, she has no choice in the matter. 

So that’s what she’s wearing, unfortunately, as she’s trying not to drown her sorrows  _ too _ hard, and when Lena Luthor appears out of the crowd in the beer tent, effortlessly elegant in a navy blue mini-dress. 

“Kara,” she greets brightly, but the fighter can see her eyes flickering to the orb-like sleeves of her own dress. “Hi… you look… festive.”

After making sure Lex or his flunkies aren’t anywhere nearby, Kara gives Lena a baleful look and twirls, expertly avoiding spilling her beer. “You don’t like it? Not into Snow White-chic?”

Wine-red lips part in a smile, and Lena shifts to put her glass on the table next to the fighter. “Oh, you look good in whatever you wear, but I know my brother’s terrible taste when I see it.” 

“So do you,” Kara shoots back without thinking, and she has to physically grip the edge of the table to stop herself from smacking her forehead. The response didn’t even really  _ make sense, _ but her brain had gone into a fit at the first part of what Lena said…  _ You look good… _

_ Friends. _ That was something normal gal friends told each other, like in  _ Sex & the City.  _ Kara gives a weak laugh and clears her throat, touching the corner of her glasses. “I mean, yeah. Lex thinks it’s the right dress for ‘the brand’, you know?”

If her mini-stumble and panic had been noticed by the heiress, Lena didn’t let it show; she just tilts her head and rolls her eyes at the subject of her brother. “Oh, do I. Lex used to insist on final approval of my outfits for prom, graduation, college graduation… But enough about him, I’m quite frankly sick of that egotistical asshole. How are  _ you, _ Kara Danvers?”

“Me? Oh… y’know. Still training.” 

Ever kind, Lena nods as if she finds that poor excuse for an answer titillating. “Have you considered challenging Anissa Pierce yet? She’s probably desperate for it. She’s beaten pretty much everyone else.”

Kara tilts her head and touches her glasses again. “You pay that close attention to women’s boxing?”

“I have many interests,” replies Lena with clearly teasing mysteriousness, one perfect eyebrow raising as she smirks, and Kara suddenly feels very hot under the canopy tent.

“Yeah, yeah, I mean, of course you do, you’re like the smartest person I’ve ever met and—“

Someone taps Lena on the shoulder, startling her into turning, and it takes approximately one hammering heartbeat before Kara flees the scene. 

The cowardly escape takes her out of the beer tent and into the silent auction hall across the street, where she sits on a wooden bench near the door and tries not to think about how Lena had said those last words, whiskey-smooth and...  _ I have many interests. _

(No. She’s just reading into it too much, from the beer.)

Kara doesn’t get much further into her spiral before another Luthor sits next to her on the bench, settling with his ebony cane propped under both palms in front of him. 

“You okay? Go for a run?” asks Lex evenly. He’s pale from too many hours behind a desk, shiny bald with a short-trimmed beard, medium height and build. The cane’s been with him for decades; an accident on a safari hunt in Africa with his father had left him with irreparable knee damage. Something about a lion that got one bite in before dying. 

“Just a little hot,” the boxer answers, not dishonestly.

“Want some water?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine.”

Finally, her manager turns to look at her, his expression neutral. “Miss Danvers, I can see you’re not falling down drunk, but I can also smell the beer on you from here.”

“Sorry,” Kara blurts reflexively, even as a flare of anger lights between her ears.

“That’s okay, it’s a celebratory day.” Lex sounds like he’s the Pope, handing out forgiveness to sinners. “I did want to talk about something with you.”

This time, she just nods, resigned to apparently getting tortured by Luthors in excruciating, myriad ways today. 

“Anissa Pierce. Thunder is the big name in the game right now, she’s got her belt and a lot of fans.” He turns back to facing forward, tapping his cane on the wood floor. “We’re going to challenge her, and you’re going to win. Do you know why you’re going to win?”

A cold dread strikes the boxer in the chest, and her fists tighten at her sides, but she keeps them on the bench. 

“Because if you don’t, I’m going to have to ask your mom to start making payments on her loan again. I can forgive the five months, since we’ve worked together so long, but this arrangement needs to start really bringing in some attention and some serious money.”

Red flashes across Kara’s vision, and her nails dig painfully into the flesh of her palms. She could very, very…  _ very _ easily throttle Lex within an inch of his life before anyone in the hall even noticed… but that wouldn’t change the bank’s ability to have the sheriffs come out, throw their stuff in the street, and slap locks on the doors and outbuildings. Not unless she could come up with $250,000 and some change before their savings run out… about sixty days, with no other sources of income. 

So all she can do is give a sharp nod, standing up from the bench. “I hear you, Mr. Luthor. Contact Thunder. I’ll win.” 

_ NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA  _

Supergirl throws the challenge flag as they head into fall, which doesn’t mean much in Louisiana. Armchair commenters online have been gnashing their teeth for the matchup for weeks, and the rising volume of trash talk from Danvers fans is growing near impossible to ignore. The request for a meeting is cordial and includes NDAs for Team Thunder to sign if they accept. Anissa and Jen studiously sleuth out more information about Lex Luthor, former manager of Superman (they’d had some kind of mysterious falling out a decade ago) and current manager of Kara Danvers. 

L-Corp seemed like your typical soulless, Koch-brothers-esque corporation, responsible for the bankruptcy of thousands of small farmers in the Plains states, even down to Arkansas. They’d donated heavily to Trump’s campaign and fought against initiatives to limit the chemical waste their company could dump into water and air wherever their agricultural processing plants were located.

That operation was a far cry from Gambi and Co, which included the gym team, one social media intern, the attorney, and Anissa herself. 

After talking about the letter for hours, Team Thunder decides to take the slow game, with Gambi making rumbles that he doesn’t think she should accept the challenge at all, not until someone ranks the young boxer higher. 

“Give her some time to let that new energy die down,” he says, frowning over his coffee at the gym’s office computer. “She’s cleaning up, but it’s a weird field right now. There are a lot of aged fighters leaving the ring.”

“It’s not like she’s going to get  _ worse, _ Unc. Supergirl and I have the same number of years left in this game. She’s just gonna learn new and better tricks,” the fighter argues back. “Plus, it’s… You  _ know _ it’s about more than just Danvers.”

Malia clicks her tongue, shaking her head. “This girl’s raw, unorthodox… I don’t know, ‘Nissa. You don’t  _ have  _ to take the fight. Seems risky right now. She’d have the upper hand in the plot.”

“Yeah, but who wants to be the champ on a technicality? I’m not gonna just hide behind the rules when you know her corporate backers are going to start tossing trash at us until we do fight. Why waste all that time?”

Gambi holds up both hands in a “timeout” sign, taking a deep breath. “We’re gonna sleep on it for two weeks. A  _ fortnight, _ Anissa. The fact that this  _ is _ about more than just two boxers in the ring is what worries me most. This isn’t just your story, kid—it’s got history, old wounds, and Lar Gand is gonna dump as much salt on you as he can. We’re taking it slow.” 

As for Grace, she’s also less than enthused about the idea. She and Lana Lang had met and become friends when the older boxer and Anissa sat on a panel of out LGBTQ+ athletes of color, including signing autographs and taking fan pictures, to raise money for The Trevor Project. Surprisingly, even though Thunder herself hadn’t been paying Supergirl any attention at the time, Grace had apparently watched Kara Danvers devastate her friend, leaving her with two broken ribs and a liver laceration on live TV.

It’s actually the first time Grace has pushed back on a matchup, and so it’s the first time Anissa has to contend with not having her wife’s support. She isn’t a fan of that feeling, not one fucking bit. The hurt sits heavy in her belly and the words don’t come out how she’d hoped when they confront each other about it while Hanh’s with her dad in Miami.

“This isn’t ego. I really feel like this will be my next great fight, like Gambi and my dad.” 

“Gambi was never out to break your father’s body, just win a boxing match,” snaps Grace, sitting stiffly on the pristine white comforter of their California King bed.

Anissa stops her pacing at the foot of the bed to look at her wife with narrowed eyes, because it’s all she can do not to roll them. “See, that’s—that’s not even a real reason. Give me one good reason, truly. I’m number one ranked,  _ pound for pound.” _

_ “Trust me, _ I know,” Grace shoots back. It’s a strike  _ meant _ to wound, and Anissa’s responding anger is like a grenade going off in their bedroom. 

Her voice rises and takes on a contemptuous lilt, her hands waving dismissively. “That’s not fucking cool, Grace, and you know it. Don’t be like that,  _ fuck.” _

“Be like what, worried about my wife’s health? Her life?”

_ “I’m the champ!” _ It comes out just at the edge of a yell, and the fighter slams her fists against her own chest. “I’m the fucking champ, and just like when I moved here, I’m gonna go out there and prove it whether I’m all alone or not.” And she’s just so amped, so unfamiliar with this feeling towards Grace, that she can’t stop the next part, though the rational side of her knows it’s unfair:  _ “Your _ opinion, quite frankly, doesn’t matter in this. I’m taking the fight. There’s no discussion.”

Something shifts in the room, and Anissa knows that they’ve crossed a line into new territory for their marriage, their relationship. Her chest’s burning with a contemptuous rage, and she’s instantly fourteen again, screaming her first (and certainly not last)  _ I hate you _ to her mother, Lynn Stewart, and going to sleep wondering if the pieces could ever be put back together again. 

“Doesn’t matter?” the artist nods, looking at the ceiling. The boxer tries not to let herself react to the tears in her brown eyes. “Okay. I see.” 

Grace stays in Hanh’s room that night, curled in a ball on the twin bed and completely silent when Anissa quietly asks if she’d be more comfortable in their bed, if she slept in a guest room. 

The non-response just piles on her mental file folder of  _ Reasons to Justify My Anger, _ and when the boxer stomps downstairs, she almost punches the wall at seeing her sister waiting for her at the bottom, arms crossed. 

“What did I say, before you two got married?” snarls Jen, whose hair is wrapped in a bright red silk, a robe around her shoulders; she must’ve been sleeping. 

“I swear to God, Jen, now is  _ not _ the time.”

“Anissa, I could hear you shouting from my room. I thought we said, I kick your ass when you do stupid shit like that?” Jen doesn’t move when Anissa storms past her, calling over her shoulder: “The fact that you’re so mad is what worries me, Anissa. Don’t forget that we all love you, you jock asshole. And don’t ever yell at my sister-in-law like that again.”

So for whatever reason (spite, betrayal, revenge) Anissa takes the fight. Their attorney, Cecile West, unhappily informs Gambi that he legally cannot stop the match, and his only option would be to refuse to be in her corner. He doesn’t take it that far, muttering the same reasoning as parents who let their kids drink at home. “At least if I’m there for her, I can do what I can to keep her safe.” 

The other fighter’s team flies out to New Orleans, and like with Tobias Whale, they sit down together for the first time in the TKO Tailor’s restaurant.

Up close, the handsome Kara Danvers is admittedly even more intimidating than on camera. She’s tall, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist—big hits, small target. The crisp white t-shirt she’s wearing over burgundy joggers is clinging to her arms for dear life, and maybe she’s stereotyping unfairly, but Anissa’s “gaydar” is chirping suspiciously.  _ Not the time.  _

“Kara’s ready for this,” Lar is saying in a low tone, his eyes avoiding Anissa’s. “She’s hit so hard and so fast that people are refusing to fight. Are you scared, too, Champ?”

Annoyingly, he’s directing the question and the title exclusively to Gambi, sarcastic though the last part may be. The old trainer folds his hands over the white fabric tablecloth as he replies, “Anissa’s at the top of the food chain right now, and she doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone. If your pitch is to insult us, you and your crew would do better to spend your time exploring the city.”

That’s as close as Gambi comes to telling people to  _ fucking shove it, _ and despite the tension in the room, Anissa has to hide her grin behind a glass of wine. She knows he’s just bluffing at this point, even if he does actually mean what he’s saying.

“With all this attention on the Pierce name, and yours Peter, don’t you think adding me to the mix will hit the big headlines?” Lar seems surprisingly unfazed by the threat. 

“Anissa may have gotten some help from her history, but that’s only because she has the jab to back it up. No offense, Ms. Danvers, but you’re just not there yet.”

The younger fighter doesn’t respond, and Anissa lets the old white dudes have at it while she returns her attention to the blonde. There’s a familiar hunger in her blue eyes, but also something darker, resonating in time with some of the demons that still live in Anissa’s own chest. Quieter overall, but louder with her recent personal strife. Their backstories are not dissimilar, after all, but as far as she knows from a somewhat embarrassing amount of pre-meet Internet research, Kara’s personal life is all but nonexistent. She’s visible, that’s for sure, with sponsorships that sound like an aisle at a small town hardware store, but is either quite private or… really boring.

“If I may, gentlemen?” 

The new voice, smooth as high-price vodka, has Anissa’s eyes automatically sliding to a member of Kara’s entourage, a pale woman with dark hair wearing a sharp black pantsuit. She’d introduced herself earlier as ‘Lena Luthor’, and Anissa of course recognized the last name, but Lena’s role in the fighter’s team hadn’t yet been explained. 

Whatever it is she does, she’s the first one from that side of the table to address her statements to Anissa directly, “Kara Danvers is the next big thing, whether you want to admit it or not. We all know that was true about you once, and your name was the only reason Whale took that challenge. Then you lost, but it gave you the chance to show the world who you are. There’s enough room in the field for two big name female boxers. Think of it as a helping hand up, and not a handout.”

That argument, if she hadn’t already made up her mind, would’ve probably changed it on the spot, especially coupled with the earnestness in the Luthor’s expression and tone. 

“Unless you don’t think you can win,” challenges Lar testily, effectively ruining the moment. 

Anissa tears her eyes away from the charismatic Lena and casts a baleful look at the old trainer before settling her gaze on Kara Danvers, who’s looking at her own hands in her lap. “Hey, Supergirl.” She waits until the blonde’s blue eyes rise to meet hers. “You know what they say about coming for the king?”

The contender studies her face for awhile, touches her glasses in what looks almost like a tic, but nods her sharp jaw. “Let’s do it.” 

And so Thunder hits a familiar routine as the clock sets for seven weeks, and the loved ones around her begrudgingly go along with it. She and Grace opt for the Not Talking About It method, somehow in agreement on that while still deeply divided about  _ Pierce v Danvers. _

There’s no boot camp now, but Anissa cuts out crosswords in the morning and adds five miles back to her twice-daily runs around the city. Having Jen and Khalil around becomes clutch for when the boxer can no longer contribute as much to parenting duties with Hanh, and Grace comments that the two are alarmingly natural at it together, so much so that Anissa buys her sister a value pack of condoms the next time she has a spare moment.

Adding to the chaos, Grace herself has an ill-timed, quick turnaround DC contract come in around a week after the fight’s scheduled, after another artist had to bow out last minute. She spends long hours in the house attic, her dedicated studio space, to the point that Anissa sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night to find herself alone in their bed (or with the inevitable Hanh starfished next to her), and she has to gently wake the sleeping artist to half-carry her to their bed. Through it all, they manage a tenuous peace, but there’s definitely less smiles between them, less casual touches and check-ins throughout the day. Correspondingly, less sex, which makes Anissa feel distant, and around and around they go. 

As if that wasn’t stressful enough, the outside world had started to weigh in, too. While Anissa had accepted the fight out of a hunger for some drama and self-righteous fury on behalf of herself and her father, as the weeks dragged on, the undertone of the fight outside of her friends and family grows more and more… toxic. 

Tori Whale came with backstory; Kara Danvers comes with politics. It’s near impossible to avoid the coded language people begin to use about their fight. Anissa suddenly becomes an “urban style” boxer, and Kara a “meat and potatoes” one. Her public persona suddenly becomes more combative, through no additional input of her own, with more prominence on clips featuring her speeches at protests and marches than her boxing,  _ especially _ a clip of the last time she got arrested at a protest in New Orleans over the police murder of Issa Williams, an unarmed seventeen-year-old. Somehow, they gloss over her gym’s after school program for at-risk local kids, summer breakfasts and lunches for children out of school, and the many other things she does to do right by her personal morals and her father’s legacy. 

Meanwhile, Kara Danvers comes off as an  _ aw, shucks _ girl next door, a fighter who promised to bring “old fashioned American boxing back”—no matter, somehow, that her trainer was a Soviet expat. That was kind of his whole thing, Lar the Czar. Someone had made and was selling “Make Boxing Great Again” hats with “Team Danvers” on the back. The Russian connection made more sense that way. 

It would’ve been nice to have the chance to knock the lights out of Lar Gand himself, but if his prize, “All-American” fighter was as close as she could get, Anissa was more than happy to take whatever opportunity available. 

Except, then things start to go off the rails for real.

_ SMALLVILLE, KANSAS _

“I’ll need the second quarter margins to know if that branch is worth keeping…”

“Lex! Lex!”

“...or if we could do better by shuttering and selling the parts…”

_ “Alexander Luthor!”  _

Frowning, the magnate stops talking and turns to the source of the voice. Lena’s still striding across the ridiculously long hallway leading to her brother’s office, steaming. She pushes through the group of aides taking notes, ignoring Lex’s two huge bodyguards and slapping away their hands.

“Can we have a moment, please?” Lex says with dripping, poisonous sweetness as he hands his tablet to an aide. Everyone except the bodyguards leaves in at a pace that could be described as a scurry. “What can I do for you today, Lena?”

“Did you tell Kara that you’ll take her family’s farm if she loses?” 

There’s just the slightest twitch in Lex’s cheek, and he studies her before answering, “It’s called motivation, Lena. You think she’ll lose?”

“Well, no, but—Lex, that is an unfathomably cruel thing to do. Her contract doesn’t contain this much specificity.”

“But it does allow for it, or you’d have a lawyer down here right now. And you’re so passionate about Supergirl’s family farm… why?”

Lena pauses, jaw clicking shut. Something dangerous lurks in her brother’s dark blue eyes, and his mouth slowly curls into a sneer. As much a she hates it, Lex controls the vast majority of L-Corp and its shareholders, and she’s not afraid to push, but he could truly cut her out if she isn’t careful. Or worse, he could take it out on the Danvers family, if anything just because he could. So she smooths her dress as she sighs, “Can you imagine the headlines? You’ll sound like North Korea, executing failed Olympians.”

“She’s not going to lose. Kara Danvers cares about two things in this world: boxing, and her family. Pierce is yesterday’s news. Besides, they haven’t made a single payment in _ years. _ Hard to play the victim like that.”

Shaking her head, the younger Luthor steps closer to him, her black stilettos bringing them eye-to-eye. “One day, all this… this malevolence in the name of profit is going to come back to you. You know what they say: you can’t take it with you, Lex.”

“Is that a threat, Lena?” He almost seems pleased at the prospect.

Instead of humoring that, she turns and stalks away from him, again ignoring all of the company’s blustering security apparati as she exits the building and climbs into the backseat of her private car. Her driver, George, seems to sense her stormy mood and rolls up the divider before they pull from the curb.

Truth be told, Lena isn’t one hundred percent sure why she’s so worked up over the little tidbit the arguably alcoholic Mike Gand had slurred into her ear while she was just trying to order a drink at the Coyote. Kara’s an old friend to be sure, but as a child of means, Lena is more than used to old and new friends coming to their family with need. Almost all of them had been turned away. 

But her brother’s ongoing torment of Kara keeps crawling under her skin, burning across her bones. It’s guilt, and it’s worry, and it’s a sinking feeling that she truly can’t do anything to stop it, except maybe pay the farm loan herself, but her assets are wrapped in the company, and she’d risk being completely shut out of L-Corp if she liquidated them. 

The guilt is more pointed towards a worry that she isn’t so different from Lex when it comes to Supergirl. Kara’s seemingly rigidly heterosexual, despite her lack of boyfriends over the years, but sometimes Lena catches those bright blue eyes watching her, from across the bar or from a boxing ring, and… She’s afraid she’s only doing this because she want something from Kara, though she isn’t willing to put words to it just yet. 

“Ehhhh,” is the creak yresponse from her best friend, Samantha Arias, Smallville-born and a senior staff attorney for L-Corp’s mortgage division, after Lena brings her up to speed over lunch. 

It’s a small cafe in the “historical” downtown called Aunt May’s, serving mostly deli sandwiches and pie by the slice. Lena twists the olive on a toothpick holding her turkey sandwich together as she prompts, “Do go on, Sam.  _ Fascinating _ take.”

Sam quickly flips her the bird and gives a healthy roll of her eyes before going on, “Isn’t Danvers dating that Mike dude? An overgrown, living embodiment of Axe Body Spray?”

“My understanding is she doesn’t even like him as a friend.”

“Who does?” jokes Sam before popping a housemade potato chip in her mouth. She’s a tall woman, thin, with long brown hair and tanned olive skin. She’s beautiful, and despite both of them having slept with or dates plenty of women in their lives, they’ve never been each other’s cup of tea, in that way. “But Lena… Kara seems, like, straight-straight.”

“How do you  _ know?” _ groans Lena, setting aside the voice that points out her level of frustration over this question mark seems to outsize her admitted feelings toward Kara Danvers. 

“Hey, that’s just the vibe I get—but I say, shoot your shot, Luthor. You’re smart, so maybe I’m wrong.”

It’s entirely unhelpful advice, but a slice of key lime pie does have Lena feeling in better spirits by the time they pay their tabs. 

“Lex keeps trying to get me to move to Chicago,” she confesses before she gets in her town car. 

Sam’s smile fades; she understands enough of L-Corp’s inner politics to know that that prospect is a loaded one. “Is he trying to push you out?”

“He calls it a promotion. I’d be Vice President of the Robotics Division.”

The attorney shakes her head and pitches her voice low to warn, “Fight it.”

“I know. You’ll tell me if you hear something about it, over in mortgageland?”

That’s a given from Sam, and the two hug before George opens the door for Lena to return to HQ and try to continue her day, even if her traitorous brain keeps dragging her back to Kara Danvers. 


	2. The Knockout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **denial** [ dih-nahy-uhl ]  
>  _n._  
>  refusal to admit the truth or reality of something (such as a statement or charge)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading/comments/kudos! I really appreciate it :)
> 
> This chapter is the chapter that is painfully necessary for the payoff at the end of this story, but otherwise I WOULD NEVER to our faves.

_SMALLVILLE, KANSAS_

The Danvers home is a six-bed, four-bath affair, red brick exterior and a light gray metal roof. It sits in the middle-west portion of the property, not quite elevated enough to see all of their acreage, but as close as they could get. They drew water from a private well dug nearly a century ago, with county electricity and propane for heat.

Back when life was that dreamy farmscape from the movies, Eliza Danvers would collect old propane tanks that she made into fire pits, cutting off the middle portion of the tank and welding legs to the bottom, to sell to the odd microbrewery and campsite looking for a statement piece.

“Hey, Kara,” greets said former amateur welder when the boxer thumps down the stairs into their kitchen. “Smitty’s going to pick up Old Flick today, so make sure you stop and say goodbye.”

“Mmhmm.” Kara gives her mother, who’s drinking coffee at the kitchen table, the customary morning kiss on the cheek, then freezes when her eyes set upon a small cardboard box in the middle of the red and white checkered tablecloth. “You didn’t…”

Eliza looks at her sideways, shrugging. “I know you’re on your super strict diet… but I have some news. Don’t get too excited though, look first.”

Huffing out a nervous breath, Kara gingerly lifts the lid and sees a _donut,_ golden brown, perfectly round… unglazed. Eliza knows her like a mother does; she’d rather suffer through an unglazed donut than no donut at all. Her fingers twitch as her brain tries to reconcile the calories and fat left over in her morning treat, and she breaks it in two pieces in an attempt to be reasonable… but quickly eats both halves anyway. _Worth it._

“Okay, I’m buttered up—what’s the news?”

Dressed in her usual soft plaid button-down and Levi’s, Eliza Danvers is tall, with white-blonde hair and kind, but perpetually tired blue eyes. She leans her elbows on the table and considers the steam from her ceramic mug before simply dropping the news: “Alex is coming back.”

That gives the younger Danvers pause, struck numb, like all of her emotions implode and cancel each other out—they haven’t seen or heard from her older sister in half a decade, something something national security reasons, apparently. They couldn’t even know what country she was in… so for the DoD to say she was coming back was like bright sunlight after walking out of a movie theater.

“I got a letter,” continues Eliza, cautiously, like she’s worried Kara will bolt. “Of course it doesn’t say when, or where she’ll arrive… but she’s coming home.”

After that, her mother lets the silence unfold, watching Kara’s face. Jeremiah’s death had been hard on all of them, of course, but Alex… Alex had taken it the hardest. So when some kind of supersecret assignment came up, she signed up and disappeared into the military industrial complex. No amount of pleading could get even get a message to her, allegedly. The only comfort they had over the years was that _no news_ meant Alex was still alive.

Did Alex expect to just pop back into their lives, when she’d _left them_ drowning? Kara and Eliza had spent countless hours working through their grief together, but would Alex spiral again upon returning to the Danvers homestead? How would they even feed, clothe, and house another person?

She drops her face to her hands, massaging the skin, and wishes desperately that she had just gone ahead and eaten a glazed donut. “I… I guess that’s good.”

Eliza’s pale hand snakes across the space between them to grasp Kara’s fingers. “I understand you’re conflicted, but I didn’t want it to be a surprise with Alex on our front door. But… your sister did what she needed to do to deal with Jeremiah’s death. You’ll have to try to forgive her for leaving sometime soon, hmm?”

Kara stands, letting out a halting breath. “I’m going for a run.”

“Don’t forget Old Flick!” Eliza calls as she shoulders through the screen door, skin suddenly itchy and hot all over, even though she’s in just a sports bra and mesh shorts.

Slipping her headphones in, the boxer bounds off the porch at a brisk pace while skipping through songs to find something, _anything_ that’ll chase away the shouting voices in her head. Her morning run, fifteen miles, hasn’t changed since she decided she wanted to be a boxer—a circuit of their land, mostly along fields of soybeans and wheat, with a small, sparsely wooded area on the west side of the property that ends at a small creek. Kansas is, of course, almost entirely flat, so while she doesn’t have any place for a “Everything the light touches” moment, she gets to enjoy the somewhat isolating feel of it, of being able to see all the way to horizon without encountering another soul.

An early-2000s indie pop album does the trick, settling Kara into a calmer headspace as her body goes into autopilot, just one foot, then the other, the corresponding movements in her arms. The Danvers family had never been rich ranchers by any means, but when she was a kid, they could at least count on profit every year. Then, slowly, with CAFOs and GMOs and all manner of technology changing the game, the profits skipped a few years at a time. Then the losses became just as reliable as the profits had once been. They couldn’t afford as many workers, which made higher production impossible, resulting in more losses, and so it cycled. Now, between their farm loan, a second mortgage, and an assortment of more debt paying for everything from equipment to feed, a way out seemed like a pipe dream. They wouldn’t lose the farm as long as Lex was happy, but they were still hemorrhaging money year over year.

But she’d seen big time boxers like Floyd Mayweather and the fortunes they amassed—so she trained and fought and kept doing what she could to try to get to that point. Anything on top would be gravy, but giving Eliza the chance to securely retire is her life’s goal, to give back to the mother who raised her with just as much love as she did her biological daughter, Alex. They couldn’t even sell the farm currently, given the debts secured against it and market value, without having to put money they didn’t have into the transaction. But the Thunder fight is a way towards salvation.

Golden wheat sways gently in the wind as she takes a right turn at a fencepost Jeremiah placed himself, with young Kara and Alex supervising from the tailgate of his F150. She hurdles the small signs now posted along each row, indicating the proprietary seeds planted there, just in case someone thought _seeds_ were something just _anyone_ could plant.

After the wheat fields, she kicks it into a sprint along the creek, practicing her horizontal movement between the trees at full speed. Kara slows down before exiting the treeline on the other side; the horse pasture is just beyond, and she can see the herd milling around as she approaches at a jog. Since the farmhands preferred ATVs to get around the property, and there were so few of them that that was feasible, Eliza and Kara had come to the difficult decision to begin selling off their fifteen horses, of which just six remained.

Old Flick wasn’t really all that old, but Eliza had started calling him that as a somewhat grumpy foal, and it stuck. He’s a darkish palomino with cream-blonde mane and tail, and he’s easy to spot against the chestnuts and bays that make up the rest of the small herd. Raising his head, Old Flick moves toward the fence to trot along side her, huffing and whinnying. He’s their sweetest gelding, and he’ll live out his days taking it easy as a team horse for those organized ride places, carting kids and parents through forested trails in the Ozarks.

Though she normally doesn’t want to break up her route, today’s The Day for Old Flick, so Kara stops her run at the gate to their pasture and waits for the palomino to approach. He gets nose rubs and the three baby carrots she’d absconded from the refrigerator for him, and Kara turns up the volume on her music when she finally jogs away from him, just another beloved thing she’s losing in a desperate bid to save whatever’s going to be left by the time that she can.

  
_NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA_

The first clue that _Pierce v Danvers_ will be more troublesome than Anissa’s anticipating is a quiet one. She doesn’t even think about it that way at first, processing it as a mild disappointment.

Jen checks her calendar late and realizes she has a mandatory sorority retreat that weekend, and Khalil has a corresponding fraternity one. So Jen can’t come, and Anissa checks with Malia to make sure that her daughter, nine year old Amma, will be there to keep an eye on Hanh—but she can’t. She has a soccer tournament in Jackson, Mississippi. Family friends Quang and his mother, Loan, are away in Vietnam for six months, so that’s not an option, either.

So Jen not being able to go morphs into Hanh not being able to go, and even though Anissa knows that a final hug from Hanh is part of her bout ritual, she reasons that it’s a small one, so she can make due without for a single fight. Gambi will still be in her corner, Grace giving her a kiss for good luck, Malia and Padman with their warmups.

One missing ritual of many? She could’ve easily worked past it, if the second and third clues hadn’t reared up and suckerpunched her in the kidneys. It would be a long time until she would admit to anyone, least of all herself, that these were all in fact red flags, not just hints.

Her training hours have increased from six to ten a day, and with four weeks to go until the fight, she’s feeling like she’s almost back to peak condition, and her weight is on track. The hard lines of her abs are back, her arms tighter in shirts than they’d been in a long time. Gambi’s been focusing on her movement so she can get out of the way of Supergirl’s near-superhuman strength, because blocking will only work so well. The days are always dotted with twice as many minutes on jump rope than she’s ever done before, and her midday plank challenge is clocking in at just over six minutes before she collapses.

Tonight, she’s finishing up the session doing combinations with Padman while Gambi looks on from the ropes, calling out his notes.

“I know you’re used to people going for your head, but I need you to protect your ribs. For me, kid?” sighs the trainer, rubbing his forehead. “Oh, come on—I saw that arm drop. If you’re done for the day, you get out of the ring.”

Left, left, right. Left, right, right. The rhythmic beat of her gloves on vinyl pads is comforting, a port in the storm of her current life. She still hasn’t resolved the disagreement about the match with her wife, or pretty much anyone else. Sometimes she catches her loved ones, Jen and Gambi or Grace and Malia, obviously talking about her when she enters the room, but no one steps to her about the match now that the contracts have been executed and notarized. _I’m the fucking champ._

She’s so focused on her self-righteous seething that she’s not even listening to Gambi’s coaching, not really, just taking the combo cues from Padman and smacking his pads accordingly.

That is, until she hears: “Okay, now mmmove yer… fffffffeeee… Mover eeeee...”

Both the boxer and Padman subsequently freeze, turning to the trainer in time to see him slump forward on the ropes, and then slide off to the floor outside the ring like a sack of potatoes.

“Call 911!” Anissa shouts to Padman as she dives through the ropes. “Unc? Unc, look at me.”

Gambi’s conscious, but the left side of his face is completely slack, and he’s trying to speak, but it’s all just unintelligible sounds.

“Uncle Gambi, you’re having a stroke,” says the PA-trained boxer, pulling his arm so that he rolls to his side, head resting on the other arm, in a position to stop him from aspirating vomit if he throws up—which he does on cue, and Anissa has to swallow a lump of panic in her own throat. “It’s okay, ambulance is on its way. Just breathe.”

By the time they make it to the hospital, Malia and Stitch are already there waiting for them. The nurses and doctors rush Gambi away while the team goes to try to figure out his insurance at the ER reception desk.

“Does he have a durable POA or next of kin?” asks the nurse.

“I don’t know,” is all they can come up with, until the woman peers closely at her computer screen.

“Looks like the information we have on record is for a Robert Gambi. Is he available?”

“He lives out of country,” sighs Anissa. “That’s his son.”

“We have a last known phone number, so we’ll try to contact him, but I’m afraid we won’t be able to release any information to you right now. I’ll have to ask you to sit in the waiting room.”

Malia and Padman sit holding hands at one end of a row of vinyl chairs, with Stitch on the other side, wringing her own hands and staring off into space. Anissa, meanwhile, paces back and forth by the windows of the waiting room, trying to keep it together. She wants to cry and scream and throw a chair through the glass, but she needs to keep her head on for Gambi.

Thinking back to the training day, he hadn’t been showing signs of the oncoming stroke. He hadn’t said anything about limb numbness, and the worsened facial paralysis hadn’t set in until he fell… or maybe the damage his boxing career’s already done made her miss the symptoms. Time is of the essence when it comes to stroke victims, and she just hopes she wasn’t too late.

Grace, Hanh, and Jen arrive within the hour. As if she can sense her wife’s presence, Anissa looks up just as they’re coming through the automatic doors. They look harried and confused, but quickly locate the team and approach. Stitch explains what happened as Grace’s eyes keep flickering to Anissa over Hanh’s shoulder.

“Baby, I’m so sorry,” she says quietly when they’ve been brought up to speed, leaning close while Hanh sits next to Jen. The child is old enough now that she can at least sense something is amiss, even if she can’t fully understand what, and she’s frowning and looking around at the adults pensively.

And that’s it for the world champion fighter; her throat closes and her eyes burn, and she lets Grace pull her into her slender arms as the first sob shudders through her chest. The artist puts one hand on the back of her head as Anissa cries into her neck, the other hand coming to rest on her back, palm rubbing consoling circles between her shoulder blades. Whatever their recent marital strife, it all melts away. Grace is literally supporting Anissa’s entire weight against her own body, but more than that, she’s keeping entirely calm, letting the fighter fall apart, because Grace is there to hold her together.

Losing Jefferson, her biological father, having never known him was bad enough. But the pain in her chest over the unknown state of her unofficial adoptive father is as sharp and intense as when she lost her mother, Nikita Washington, at four years old. Something sharper and more indescribably painful than any punch she’s taken, in the ring or out. It steals her breath and sends fear searing across her skin, and all she can do is let it all out, until she has to sit down before she hyperventilates, still embracing Grace’s middle tightly as the artist stands between her legs, brushing aside the twists that had fallen in her face.

When the nurse from the front desk finally calls her name, Anissa wipes her cheeks furiously as she walks over the desk, Grace right behind her.

The woman looks tired, but sympathetic, and hands her a travel pack of tissues. “Robert Gambi has given verbal permission for you to act as DPOA in his absence.”

Anissa sets aside her flash of indignant anger that Robert, who she’s never met or even spoken to, isn’t on a plane right now to see his ailing father. It’s not the time. Instead, she nods, and a neurologist who introduces herself as Dr. Sayyid comes out to speak with her.

“He’s lucky he wasn’t alone. You got him here fast enough that his prospects for substantial recovery is fairly high. We’ve got him on his second bolus of IV tPA,” explains the doctor from behind acrylic-framed glasses. She has kind brown eyes and a soft British accent. “Doesn’t appear the stroke is ischemic, but once he’s had some time to recover, we’ll know more about the extent of the existing damage.”

It’s good news, given the situation, but Anissa still grills the very patient neurologist on Gambi’s stats, and once she’s satisfied, Dr. Sayyid leads her past the security doors to his room. It’s your standard hospital digs, except a private space, with white walls and floors broken up by the pastel green of the bedding.

When she approaches the bed, the boxer sees Gambi’s awake, and there’s panic in his eyes, so Anissa stays calm, holding his right hand tightly. “Hey, Unc. You scared the shit outta me, man.”

Gambi seems to nod, letting out a wheezing breath and blinking slowly. He looks like he’s aged twenty years, frail and… small.

After pulling the nearby chair up to the side of the hospital bed, Anissa fusses over his blanket and checks all the machines twice, but eventually there’s nothing more to do than sit with him and wait. Her mind races with the implications of all this, but for Gambi’s sake, she makes sure to keep it off her expression, eventually falling asleep with her head on the edge of the mattress.

_SMALLVILLE, KANSAS_

_“...news that boxing legend Peter Gambi, the TKO Tailor, has been hospitalized at Tulane Medical Center after suffering a stroke. While his condition is said to be stable, sources suggest he won’t be able to attend the upcoming world title fight between Anissa Pierce and Kara Danvers.”_

At night, when everyone else has called it a day, Kara Danvers finds peace in the corrugated metal building that serves as the Cadmus Gym, alma mater of Superman. After too many times sober and sitting around, Lar had gotten so tired of waiting for her to leave that he just made her a copy of the key, warning that if anything was stolen because she forgot to lock up, it’d be taken out of her paycheck. She didn’t take it personally; the man’s son was Mike, who was absolutely unreliable enough to do something like that.

She keeps the box TV on to avoid scaring herself with every groan and creak of the building, but it’s just background noise as she works a speed bag, letting her mind drift as her muscle memory does the work.

Without all the bluster and macho yelling of her team, Kara has room to breathe, to remember why she loves boxing. Not for title belts and getting her face on a box of cereal—for the rush of it, the challenge, and the struggle. As much as she likes her spotless record, the lack of players in the sport means a lack of serious matches, or at least ones that made her feel like she had to push herself. She hopes Thunder can deliver while losing.

Though she’d never admit something like this out loud with her family home on the line, Kara wishes she could fight the _Whale v Pierce_ version of the champ, a once-in-a-generation boxer delivering a near flawless performance, rather than the sinking star she’s been seeing more often than Nike commercials than fighting matches. It’d been the same with Lang, with Katana, both letdowns—the field is starving for brilliant fights, and so’s Kara Danvers.

The sound of the door opening startles her into losing the bag, and she pivots with her heart racing.

“Oh! Oh, I’m sorry,” laughs Lena Luthor, a ring of several keys jingling in her hand. “I didn’t know anyone was here.”

“Lena! Hi! I—yeah, I like to—what are you doing here?” Kara tries not to wince at herself, folding her hands behind her back after a quick touch to her sweat-speckled glasses. “I mean, not that I’m not happy to see you. I’m always happy to see you, and I…” The fighter clears her throat and attempts a smile, but it somehow also comes with a breathless wheeze. She’s suddenly very aware that she’s wearing just a pair of leggings and a sports bra, but resists the urge to self-consciously grab a nearby sweat towel.

Green eyes curl with Lena’s wry smile, sending heat across Kara’s cheeks and down her neck, and the heiress moves closer from where she’d been by the side door. “I forgot to grab the cash bag earlier today. What’re _you_ doing here, Danvers? It’s almost midnight.”

Kara shrugs, genuinely. “I like to train in quiet sometimes.”

Humming her noncommittal response, Lena keeps sliding forward until she’s close enough to tap the speed bag with her fingers, tilting her head as it stutters in place. She’s also close enough that Kara can smell the spice of her shampoo, and the blonde takes a nervous step back.

“How does this work?”

“What? The speed bag?”

Lena nods and drops her purse, and Kara’s thankful her friend isn’t facing her, because she knows she’s wide-eyed as Lena slips off her thin jacket and drops that, too, leaving her in a pale yellow camisole and jeans. “Yes, the speed bag. You just…?”

The boxer tries not to smile at the painfully soft punch Lena lands on the bag, and when she actually ducks when it swings back towards her, nowhere _near_ her face. “Getting started’s the hardest part. There’s a rhythm to it.”

Lena gives it a few more half-hearted tries, then shifts her weight to one hip and looks at Kara with a shrug. “Can you show me?”

Though her pulse is threatening to burst out of her neck, the fighter moves closer, slowly working the bag as she explains, “You, uh, want three swings between each punch—forward, back, forward, and then you hit it when it comes back.”

Kara keeps up her rhythm, increasing slowly until she’s at speed, the bag little more than a red blur. When she’s finished, she gives it a particularly hard whack and steps back to find Lena looking at her with a… peculiar expression, lips slightly parted. The Luthor blinks a few times and it’s gone, like an apparition she isn’t sure she imagined. It leaves something different in the air between them, and Kara finds herself holding her breath as she watches green eyes drag over her arms, across her chest, and then back up. Her skin tingles wherever that gaze tracks.

“That’s, um… really impressive,” says Lena quickly, and Kara’s heart sinks a little when she crosses her arms and leans back slightly. “Must’ve taken you years. Bet you don’t even think about it anymore, ‘cause you’re so… good at it.”

_Is Lena Luthor… rambling?_ Kara feels a flicker of self-assurance, and she offers, “Here, give me your wrists. I’ll show you.”

The boxer slides her feet until she’s behind Lena; her arms are long enough that she can grasp the shorter woman’s wrists from behind her without quite touching chest to back. When Lena doesn’t flinch or move away, she relaxes, moving the Luthor’s arms into the right shape. The skin under her fingertips is soft, and Lena’s jet black hair brushes her cheek as she leans around to her ear. That’s _very_ distracting, and she forgets to speak at first.

“It’s, uh, a forward roll. Hit it with this part of your hand, and—yep. You won’t get hit in the face, I promise.” Kara’s sure she’s close enough that Lena could hear her heart hammering in her ribcage if not for the rattling of the speed bag, and when Lena shifts backward, bumping into Kara’s front…

“Sorry, I’m sweaty, and you—you’re not,” the fighter’s saying as she steps back so quickly Lena almost stumbles, then she apologizes at least three more times. _Smooth._

There’s a pause where Lena stays in place, not looking at the boxer, and then she tries not to look disappointed when the Luthor leans down to pick up her things, giving that Midwesterner sigh that points toward the end of a conversation as she turns and straightens. “That was fun, Kara. Thanks for the lesson.”

“Anytime.”

Lena’s gone into the office and is heading back to the side door when she pauses, looking at the ground, and then up at Kara, who’s moved to semi-hide from her by a heavy bag. Her expression’s taut when she says, “I’m sorry, by the way—about Lex and this whole, win or pay situation. I would stop it if I could.”

“I know, Lena. I appreciate that. But I’ll win anyway.”

Her friend’s expression softens, but then she briskly heads out the metal door, the heavy crash of it echoing off the walls of the empty gym when it swings closed.

Kara has mixed reviews about that encounter, but she does feel a second wind as she gets started on the heavy bag.

_NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA_

Dr. Lynn Stewart arrives at the hospital three days after Gambi’s stroke and promptly questions everything his medical team did, regardless of the fact his prospects for recovery look good, with the proper speech, occupational, and physical therapy (it’s suddenly very clear where Anissa gets her approach to talking to doctors). He has trouble annunciating, following conversations, and finishing thoughts, plus severe weakness in his right arm—but his facial muscles have more or less returned to how they were before, and his short- and long-term memory seem mostly intact. The doctors recommend moving him to a short-term rehabilitation facility once his insurance stops paying for the hospital. There are three or four places that Anissa and Lynn find acceptable, though the latter wants to visit each location first.

What Gambi will most certainly not be able to do is coach Anissa through the Danvers fight, and even though that feels insignificant compared to the near-loss of Gambi’s life, it’s a storm cloud hovering at the edges of the boxer’s mind as the big day looms closer, less than a month away. Her corner needs a leader, and she needs someone great to step into the empty space where Peter Gambi had stood, even if only temporarily. There are very few people who could reasonably try, and Anissa chews over the names when her mind wanders, but there’s a clear frontrunner. She calls and arranges a meeting, one-on-one, but it requires flying back to Los Angeles, so it’s set three days out from the call.

After sweet talking a handful of nurses and one exceedingly surly attending, Anissa had convinced the physical therapy teams to let her use their treadmill so she could spend as much time in the hospital as possible. It was far too close to the match to skip workouts, but this was a family emergency, and otherwise she’d made due where she could.

And she’s on the treadmill when her mother comes to find her, standing patiently by the side of the machine until Anissa slows it down enough that they can speak.

“Did you say you two have an IUI appointment next month?” opens Lynn, never the type of woman to beat around the bush.

“Yeah, why?” pants Anissa, messing with the incline setting on the treadmill to make up for her lower speed. “I know it’s a medical procedure, but uh, we weren’t inviting guests?”

“Oh, hush.” Lynn rolls her eyes as her daughter chortles, but she’s smiling as she continues, “I just… I didn’t want to be rude, so I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Well, what is it? You’re kinda freaking me out.”

“Are you _sure_ Grace isn’t pregnant, right now?”

_“What, now?”_

Anissa does hear the question perfectly fine, but it takes two more steps before she fully understands what her mother’s implying, and _that’s_ a jarring enough thought that she instinctively plants her feet, which sends her sliding back and off of the treadmill before she can get her wits together, and she ends up sprawled on the floor.

Lynn asks if she’s okay, breathlessly, before breaking into laughter as the boxer picks herself and what’s left of her pride off the floor.

“All right, all right, Ma. No-no-I get it, and I am one hundred percent gonna laugh about this later, but I need you to explain before I pop a blood vessel. She had her period—“ The boxer pauses, doing a quick calculation, but her brain fizzles out.

“You know better than that. Anissa, have you _looked_ at your wife lately?” The older woman tilts her head, brows furrowing. “What’s going on with you two? You’ve been acting strangely since I got here.”

The fighter’s skating along the edge of madness with anticipation about all of this, but her mother’s precision cut on the situation has her reflexively muttering, “Lot longer than that.”

A shadow of concern passes over Lynn’s elegant features, and Anissa sighs as the taller woman puts an arm over her shoulders. “Walk with me. Let’s talk.”

They stop by the cafeteria for plain coffees and walk slowly back towards the elevator.

“So what’s going on with you? Jennifer says you’ve been moody, irritable. You haven’t been calling me as much.”

Keeping her eyes straight ahead, the boxer tries to find the right way to explain, but it seems like there’s _so much_ to parse, or maybe it’s just one thing, and all the tiny knife cuts along the way are the punishment for their ongoing disagreement.

“Do you remember when you came out to me, as a lesbian?”

Anissa can’t help the small smile that springs to her face at that memory, one so, so much better than so many of her peers had with their parents. “Silence, for about a minute, and then hugs.”

Lynn waits again, but the fighter’s just not able to force the words past her lips, and so her mother continues, “You know, a mother’s love is a very powerful thing, Anissa. You feel it for Hanh, and you and Grace plan to bring this new life into the world—I sense something is weighing heavy on you. Your silence worries me probably more than anything you could say.”

“I… I’m a little embarrassed, I guess.” The fighter cranes her neck to look up at her mother, feeling ten years old again, having to confess to breaking the nice vase on the table. “It’s the fight. Grace didn’t want me to take it. Still doesn’t want me to take it.”

“I’m listening.”

Anissa sucks in a breath and gulps coffee before continuing, “We fought about it, that went bad, and we just… haven’t talked about it since. There’s been so much going on.”

“You have to find the time for each other.” Lynn rubs her back as they stop in front of the elevators. “But I’m sure you know that, sweetie.”

The boxer nods, watching the numbers on the screen above the doors start changing. “I’ve let a lot of things get away from me the last few months. It’s this fight, Lar Gand… I _can’t_ let him disrespect our family again.”

“That man is radioactive with hate. It seeps into you, into everything he touches. It’s how he fought, and how he trains his fighters.”

The two women pause their conversation as they enter the elevator, and Anissa’s anxiety gets a few quiet seconds to start fretting about what’s happening, hitting a crescendo on the _ding_ before the doors yawn open. As they exit onto Gambi’s floor, Grace is down the hall talking to Khalil, laughing as they sit next to each other in the lobby’s red polyester chairs.

Lynn stops her with a gentle hand on her shoulder, saying quietly, “Gambi has been one of the only parts of your career that helps me sleep at night. I knew he would never let what happened to your father happen to you, too. That’s gone now, and… I know there’s nothing any of us could say to stop you, but I want you to keep in mind that no one will protect you like he does. Remember that.”

“Okay, okay…” Anissa puts an arm around her mom’s middle and turns both their attention to Grace. “Now let’s hear it, Dr. House.”

Clearing her throat, Lynn jokingly uses her doctor voice as she rattles off her evidence: “Patient presents with an increased appetite, as I witnessed in the cafeteria this morning when Grace ate not one, not two, but three breakfast sandwiches. Gravitating towards salty snacks. Her clothes don’t fit correctly, and her skin has a certain... glow to it.”

“‘Glow’, huh? That what the MDs call it?”

“Stop making fun for one second and _look at your wife,_ Anissa.”

The boxer does, initially thinking _sure,_ they’ve been distant, but she _lives_ with the woman, sleeps next to her at night, and her mom’s just… _Oh._

Grace laughs at something Khalil says—those two have always been peas in a pod—and when she reaches over to touch his arm, Anissa does notice… a couple things. Her wife’s trusty brown and green flannel _doesn’t_ look like it’s fitting right, the buttons uncharacteristically strained against her breasts and hips. And she will _never_ admit it out loud, but the glow thing? Accurate, somehow. The artist looks like sunlight’s going to come out of her pores, and without another word to her mother, Anissa strides down the hall to her wife.

“Hey babe, what are you—“ Grace cuts off when the fighter takes her hand and tugs, gently, but it appears to be surprising enough that the artist just gets to her feet.

In one breath and over her shoulder, Anissa replies, “Grace, babe, I need you to come with me right now, Khalil—so sorry to interrupt, Ma’ll keep you company, just give us a few.”

“Anissa, did I miss something? Where are we going?”

The fighter pauses, realizing that’s a fair question, and glances around for potential eavesdroppers before clearing her throat and asking, as gently as possible, “Have you had a period since that first one after we tried with the—you know?”

Grace opens her mouth as if that’s an obvious answer, but then she pauses, and Anissa can see the understanding crawl across her wife’s face.

Thirty minutes and some heavy-handed “requests” from Anissa later, and they’re sitting in a clinic room, hands entwined as an ultrasound technician prepares the machine and applies the icy cold gel to Grace’s lower belly.

“All right, so just give me a moment here...” The tech adjusts the wand, and Anissa stops breathing when a rapid, rhythmic noise comes through the machine, tinny and muffled, but unmistakable. She’s seen enough of these to know exactly what’s on the screen, but she’s too caught up to respond as the tech goes on, “And there’s your baby, folks. Looks perfect for eleven weeks. Congratulations.”

Anissa’s sure the kindly woman keeps talking after that, but she’s _completely_ zeroed in on the alien shape in black and white, huge head and smaller body, nestled in cavernous dark. The soundwaves below follow the strong heartbeat thrumming away, insistent and heedless of all the chaos and strife that’s ruled its mothers’ lives as of late.

When the tech leaves them to fetch an attending, Anissa’s family being VIP and all, the two women sit in stunned silence at first, hands still gripped together, until Grace finally says, breathless and high, “I just thought… with everything that’s been going on… it was the stress, and-and I haven’t really been—“

The artist makes a small, surprised noise when Anissa lurches out of her chair to capture her wife’s lips in a kiss, her free hand coming up to brush her knuckles along Grace’s jaw. When it ends, she doesn’t pull away, pressing her forehead to her wife’s and inhaling deeply against her lips.

“Say something,” whispers Grace, pleading.

There’s so much hanging between them, layers of hurt and poor communication obscuring the love she knows they have for one another, but this moment is sacred. It’s going to be one they talk about for their child’s whole life. The other stuff can’t be allowed in here. She slides a warm palm over Grace’s stomach, now covered by her shirt, and smiles a watery smile as she completely blasphemes the event instead by teasing, “So your uterus is really just _ready,_ huh? One and done, both kids. All business down there.”

She watches, delighted, as Grace does that thing she does when she is mad at herself for laughing at Anissa’s joke, a helpless chuckle coupled with a frustrated whine and a pout—it’s one of the boxer’s favorite looks. “Jesus, you can’t help yourself for _one_ second.”

“Around you? Never.”

Grace’s expression shifts to one of open affection as she sits up on the exam table, encouraging Anissa to put her head on her shoulder. “We’re having a baby,” whispers the artist from somewhere above her.

“We’re having a baby,” repeats the boxer with a sniffle. “Grace, I wanted to say, I know that I—“

They’re interrupted by the OB/GYN coming back to talk over Grace’s blood test and the scans, but Anissa’s too busy floating on cloud nine to worry. They can talk about their stuff later.

_LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA_

The Green Light Gym seems timeless. Aside from technical upgrades, it’s always been a pristine bastion of LA’s boxing scene, with the list of champion alumni to prove its clout is more than just history. The late Jefferson Pierce may be the most storied former Green Light fighter, featured in a larger than life mural on their back wall, but he has good company in the likes of Brion Markov, Rex Mason, and of course, Emily Briggs.

When Anissa walks in for the first time since winning her title, the training fighters don’t catcall her like they used to, and they stop what they’re doing to stare, but she’s undisturbed as she walks with purpose to the second floor office. Lala is waiting for her, feet propped on his desk, and he asks her to close the door before saying hello.

As much as it scares her to take this chance, Lala is the only one who can come close to training her as well as Gambi, in more ways than one. He’s known Anissa for a long time, and she hopes he has at least some sentimental feeling toward the relationship between his father and Jefferson Pierce. Abel Johnson had also been ringside the night Black Lightning died. He had also done nothing to stop it, as much as he loved his lifelong friend. She hopes Lala could at least recognize where his father had gone wrong and do better for Thunder.

Anissa sits in the metal folding chair across the particle board desk, sighing heavily.

“So, business,” grunts Lala. He’s at least not smirking, and more importantly, he hasn’t called her Princess yet. “Sorry to hear about the Tailor. Time is a motherfucking bitch.”

“And the Devil deals the cards.” The fighter leans back and shrugs. “Have you considered my offer?”

“I have, some. But you have to know that Supergirl is a beast, right?”

“So am I.”

Lala takes his feet off the desk, looking almost pensive. Her hope rises a little, and she keeps going.

“Look, while I disagreed with it, I do understand why you wouldn’t train me before, and being honest, you were right. I needed training wheels, and Gambi was the only guy who could’ve gotten me this far. That’s not an apology.”

The trainer chuckles dryly. “I think I liked you better as a hothead, but you definitely fight better when you’ve got it together. Sell me on how you beat Superblondie.”

A loaded question. “She’s a brawler. She’s fast, but everyone tries to come at her hard out the gate. It won’t work. She’s patient. So it’s about whether she thinks she has a clean shot—and if she does, she’ll strike.”

“But if you’re _expecting_ that…”

“Fake, block, or get out of the way. Test _her_ stamina for once.”

Lala’s frowning, but he doesn’t say no. “Danvers is almost inhuman. _Big._ Fast. Strong. That’s a balanced breakfast over there, and the bad history all over this fight, man… Honestly, I woulda told you not to take the match in the first place, but I do respect that you did.”

Strangely, Anissa’s distaste for Lala Johnson powers down to a mere general annoyance. She has to admit that his words are incredibly affirming, and she is exceedingly starved for that feeling. It may or may not be a good thing, but she’ll take it. “That’s why I need you in my corner. Let’s put _our_ bad history aside and rewrite the ending to our fathers’ stories.”

“You don’t gotta do all that, I’m in,” he sniffs, but his mouth curls into a smile that’s so genuine as to look alien on his face. “Your father was good to me, but just know, I’m not gonna let you mess around on this. You lose, and I will not take an ounce of blame for that.”

“I know. I got a wife, a kid, and one on the way. This is the fight of my life. I need you.”

“Team Thunder it is, then. Oh, and congratulations.” He chuckles. “I hate kids.”

Ignoring that last part, they shake on their new partnership, and Lala flies back to the Big Easy with her the next day.

  
_NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA_

It’s _hot_ in New Orleans. Boggy. Kinda smelly, in the densest parts of the city, like the French Quarter. It’s like Kara’s breathing underwater, her hair rebelling against the ludicrous humidity. It’s fall, for fuck’s sake, and she wants mid-60s with a strong wind. It’s almost 90 degrees in September, and she spends the five days leading up to the fight feeling perpetually sticky with sweat.

Worse, the heat and oppressive moisture in the air make Lar more irritable than usual, which is not the kind of company she wants for a night out on Bourbon Street, but of course, there he is, lumbering behind her like a drunk, sweaty bear holding a Hurricane. She’s never asked, directly, why Lar always drinks with her, instead of Mike, but Lar is a smart man, if deeply flawed. Her suspicion is that the old Soviet knows exactly how useless his son is, whereas Kara can at least throw a good punch.

The looming fight is big enough news locally that Kara gets recognized every block or so in the crowds, with responses ranging from asking for an autograph and a selfie to mocking insults from Thunder fans. She steers Lar clear of an intersection decked out in rainbow, managing to convince him to instead sit down in a bar that has $3 Jagermeister shots fifteen minutes past each hour, for the five minutes a neon sign on the wall touting the deal is lit. He takes full advantage of the offer.

Away from the press of people, Kara ignores Lar singing along to the jukebox as he buys cigarettes from a vending machine in the corner. She closes her eyes, elbows braced on the bar, and breathes deeply to calm her racing heart, which has been ramping up with each day they draw closer to the title match. The weigh-in is in two days, thus Kara is woefully stone cold sober in the middle of Bourbon Street, and she’s feeling antsy about everything, really, but mostly about Anissa Pierce. Thunder may be shorter and smaller than her, but she’s versatile, knew how to rise to a challenge, and had proven she could power through more brutal punishment than anyone Kara’s faced so far. The mainstream media narrative tends to disagree, but she’s uncomfortable to go into the match as the generally favored fighter, if anything because it just raises the stakes even higher. She can’t start to buy into it and get caught underestimating the champ.

Eventually, mercifully, the low-price shots push Lar to his limit, and Kara loads him into an Uber to their hotel with, in addition to the app tip, an extra $10 bill for the driver and a _good luck_ to her trainer.

It’s getting later than she’d planned to be out, but she still watches the car turn the corner and quickly pivots back down the street, taking the opportunity to finally appreciate the place millions of people visit each year at her own pace. The throngs of people feels less oppressive without Lar, and she pulls her hood up to stroll around less conspicuously. New Orleans looks like how she’s seen it in movies and the occasional viewing of _The Originals,_ but she now understands why people insist you have to _be there._ The sound of Bourbon Street is both overwhelming and almost like white noise, with kids drumming away on ten-gallon plastic tubs for dollars, drunk college students in roving herds, and all manner of human beings—all in one place, all having a good time. As far as vibes go, it’s about as opposite to the Wild Coyote with Lar as she could get, and it felt… freeing.

Then Kara’s feet, and definitely _just_ her feet make the decision, carry her back down to where she’d spotted those Pride Flags earlier. She finds a spot out of the way of traffic and observes, hands shoved into her pockets.

A foursome of drag queens is gallivanting around the intersection, cheerily greeting passersby and taking pictures with tourists. One of the bars has an open second floor balcony, and she can see what turns out to be a wall of shirtless men dancing together and holding up drinks. There’s a pack of women, some with short hair, some with long, hollering and doing body shots in the window of another establishment. A blonde with an Ashlyn Harris haircut wraps her arms around a redhead and pulls her in for a _graphic_ kiss, and there’s a surprising, forceful response from the boxer’s lower extremities.

Kara’s hardly dated _anyone_ in her quarter century of life—James Olsen, varsity quarterback at the time, is really the only one who she cared enough about that he broke her heart; their high school sweethearts thing had soured within weeks of James shipping off to Lawrence for college. There had later been two (2) whole awkward dates with the very sweet Winn Schott, president of the AV club, and one terrible blind date with Adam Grant, whose family owned the local paper.

All that to say, she’d never quite thought about her _sexual orientation_ much past “Mike Gand will never to touch me.” There was no LGBT resource center in Smallville, no gay clubs, no GSAs at the sole high school, and while they did have the Internet, that tended to just inform the townsfolk about how hatefully to fear the “homosexual agenda” year over year. Kara would hear scandalized whispers that Lena Luthor had been spotted kissing girls in college—Stanford—but the small town gossip about the Luthor family was endless, anyway. Besides, it wasn’t like any of them would ever dare to bring it up to the family, abominable sin or not; the Luthors were untouchable in Smallville. You either worked for them, loved someone who worked for them, contracted with them for the majority of your business, or owed them debt if you lived there.

So Kara Danvers isn’t sure what she wants out of the mini-Pride happening in front of her, but she knows that she feels… more _comfortable_ here, than anywhere else on the street. There’s liberation in the air, not Independence Day lip service in red white and blue, but a rejection of shame in all the colors of the rainbow.

She takes down her hoodie and sucks in a deep breath against the rush of nerves that follows. One of the passing drag queens sporting a spot-on Cher getup says something that ends in calling her “a daddy,” and she agrees to a selfie with her before deciding to walk back to the hotel.

* * *

With Jen and Khalil at a movie with Hanh, Lynn on a flight back home to California, and Stitch taking a shift sitting with Gambi at the hospital, Grace and Anissa finally find a free evening to celebrate their timely surprise, only about four weeks late. They start by ordering the boxer no less than ten baby and parenting books, and then move on to start planning the nursery. Hanh’s room had been purposefully selected to leave this guest room in between, and since that had been what they planned to do, they hadn’t done any work to it since moving into the house.

Anissa breathes deeply against her wife’s neck as she stands close behind her, arms around the artist’s waist and to rest her hands on her lower belly. Grace has her own head back against Anissa’s shoulder as she scrutinizes the bare, pale yellow walls of the room and chews on the end of her pen.

“Everyone does gray now,” murmurs Grace absentmindedly, like she’s not even talking to her wife. “Accent colors… But I really hate stencils and stickers…”

The boxer listens more to the scratchy undertone of the artist’s voice than the words themselves, breathing deep the smell of jasmine and spice, of _Grace._

“Are you listening to me?”

“No. Were you talking to me?”

A beat, and then a soft chuckle. “Not really.”

“Mhmm.” Anissa presses a kiss behind Grace’s ear and sighs, contentedly.

And she doesn’t want to disrupt the moment, but she’s running out of time and perhaps more importantly, she’s tired of the divide lingering between them, even if they’ve been mostly floating on a cloud since finding out their big news. The darker cloud of their disagreement still hovers nearby, always in her periphery.

So after a breath, she says softly, “I’m sorry. About how I handled taking the fight. I haven’t said it yet, and I need to—I’m sorry.”

Her wife stiffens, and then turns in her arms. She puts a gentle palm to the fighter’s cheek, but her expression is one of disappointment as she replies, “Thank you for saying that, but… You’re still fighting, so what’s the point?”

“What do you mean?” The boxer bristles, but manages to keep her temper tamped down as she waits for her wife to find the words.

“It’s just… I’m right here, with you. _Right here,_ by your side. World title holder or PA or unemployed—our children and I will be _here_ with you, always. But you? You’ve been acting like it’s so easy for you to leave _us._ That’s what makes me more upset than anything else.”

A few half-assed defenses rise and die in her chest. Anissa’s eyes _want_ to turn away, or close, anything to escape the agony in her wife’s eyes. The fear. That _she_ caused. Lynn’s looked at her that way a thousand times, but the guilt is nearly immolating there, in their future child’s nursery, just the boxer and the artist, because while Grace’s words aren’t how she looks at the situation, she cannot make herself say that it’s wrong, either. The burst of emotion makes her come within a breath of agreeing to call it all off, to let the consequences roll, but as much as Anissa has grown since she left Los Angeles for New Orleans… She _can’t_ change her mind on this. She can’t.

The dragging silence seems to get this across to Grace on Anissa’s behalf, and her heart’s breaking to see her wife’s shoulders droop, so without any other ideas of what to do she tries to smother all of it by leaning forward for a kiss, seeing Grace frown right before their lips touch. She expects the artist to then turn away, but Grace pushes closer instead, throwing her arms around Anissa’s shoulders. The kiss is too rough and Grace’s nails are digging into her skin as they stumble in search of a flat surface, any will do, but she gets it.

They’ve been _furious_ with each other for weeks. They’ve _missed_ each other for weeks, too. The simultaneous pain and solace of pressing against one another this way is exactly like the contrast of the stinging grooves carving into her shoulders and the thrumming pleasure already building in her belly.

It also seems appropriate that they never make it back to their bedroom that night, a place where their marriage is sacrosanct, because this is new for them: the edges of frustration and hurt being sorted, and at least superficially soothed, through touch alone. Grace tugging too hard at Anissa’s twists ( _I love you, you stubborn asshole)_ and Anissa sucking a mark into the skin below Grace’s collarbone on the guest room daybed _(This isn’t because I love you less)._ She’s not sure it actually resolves anything between them, but when they curl against each other to sleep, sweaty and exhausted, her wife’s at least smiling.

That’s where the boxer wakes up, startled by her cell phone alarm, with a sleeping Grace wrapped around her with both arms and one leg. It’s warm and mercifully silent in the house, the thin line between the window curtains glowing deep orange with the early hour. Anissa only has a few minutes before she needs to get up, but she’s going to take them all, not only because there is a zero chance she moves without waking her Grace-shaped koala, but also because her wife’s belly, just curving out enough to be easily noticeable at fifteen weeks, is tucked snugly against her side. Their child, slumbering away.

These are her stakes. In three days’ time, she’ll step into the ring for this, for her father, for Gambi, for herself.

Worst case scenario? She loses. And she can handle that, she’s sure of it, even if no one else believes her.

She wishes she could stay, she tells herself, but she still gets up to start getting ready, predictably disturbing her wife and leaving her groaning and rubbing her eyes as the boxer pads into the hallway. Grace follows her into the master bathroom a few minutes later and wordlessly gets in the shower.

* * *

Weigh-in day feels like the summit of a mountain, but it’s still not the finish line.

For the twenty-seven days before the match left since hiring her old nemesis, Anissa had spent every waking moment training with Lala. They had to go through a speedread of getting to know each other as athlete and coach, with plenty of testy exchanges stemming from their contemptuous history popping up along the way. He and the rest of the team got along okay, but the tension of someone taking Gambi’s place never quite resolved itself.

One thing she did like about working with Lala was his relative youth compared to the TKO Tailor. He could run the pads when he felt like he needed to get something across himself, and he could go all day at full intensity, focused on their goals like a heat seeking missile. That helped, but she knows she was in better form for the Whale fight than this one, and rationalizes that that’s okay—Whale is a living legend. Supergirl’s just getting off the starting block.

Anissa blinks back to the ceremony as flashbulb bursts hit a peak when her weight registers, a pound below the limit. Supergirl’s only about 12 ounces off. The fight’s set, and they remain standing on the stage for the press conference portion of the event.

Reporters lob easy questions at them to start, _How are you feeling? How has the history behind this fight affected your approach?_

And then a woman with big blonde hair and a radioactive blue pantsuit asks something that prompts a reaction ending in the age-old tradition of a weigh-in day trash talking session: “There’s been a lot of heated stuff said online about this match. Do either of you have anything to say to the fans about all that?”

Of course, Lar Gand is somehow the first one to answer that, rambling on about “PC culture” and “snowflakes” for an unintelligible two minutes before he looks at Kara, and now, Anissa listens carefully.

“I, um,” begins the blonde, clearing her throat. “It’s like any sport. Fans get really worked up. There are good people, and bad people, on both sides. Sometimes people get carried away.”

It takes everything inside of Thunder not to roll her eyes at “fine people on both sides” strategy, and she redirects the furious energy at her own response, “The Danvers fans have spewed racist, homophobic, and ethnonationalist crap at me since before we even scheduled the bout. People have threatened my family, saying I deserve to be raped and killed, and the fact that no one of a lighter skin shade on that side of this stage is willing to call it that is _very_ telling. To my fans, I say, don’t feed the trolls, stay safe, but we’re not here to take any shit, either.”

With a choked chuckle, Lala smirks next to her, declining to add anything else as the reporters burst with a flurry of follow up questions, but then Anissa notices commotion to her right. It’s Team Supergirl that breaks first as a man with a scruffy brown beard and red “Make Boxing Great Again” hat shoves Padman as they yell at each other, and then the chaos hits, because what is a weigh-in if not a good show.

Everyone on the stage is shouting, but Anissa ends up with Lar Gand himself hurling abuse into her face as they’re jostled by the crowd. There are some highlights, but Anissa can’t be bothered to take notes of his monologue. She’s read better takes in the Facebook comments on local news stories. What’s more difficult is keeping her hands at her sides, allowing him to come into her space, but not backing down… and not knocking his block off. Lar’s face gets redder the more he yells, but the security guys are getting things somewhat under control, so Anissa just lifts her chin and smirks at him.

Her shoulders tense when Lar’s hand jerks back, not in a fist, but a flat, open palm, and she’s ready to duck the anticipated slap… but it never comes. He freezes, or so she initially thinks, until she sees Kara Danvers has hold of his wrist, bicep flexing slightly as she keeps him in place.

The two fighters’ eyes lock, and Anissa isn’t sure what she sees. Kara’s not a hothead like her team, she knows, but there’s something undeniably desperate there, like she’s liable to snap at any moment, a starving lion risking a cobra bite because it’ll starve to death otherwise. She still hasn’t been able to put her finger on the root of Supergirl’s muted, strange energy, but she nods in thanks to the other fighter anyway before they all clear the stage.

“No, _fuck them,”_ Anissa hears the guy in the MABA hat growling as he’s dragged towards the exit. “Animals.”

Malia grabs Anissa’s shoulder before the boxer turns, whispering, “Save it for the ring, girl. That dude would piss his pants if you hit him, anyway.”

She’s only inclined to agree because the man disappears from sight, but the champ is sure she wouldn’t mind running into him in a dark alley somewhere, so she commits his face to memory.

* * *

_“As if there wasn’t already enough drama surrounding the first matchup between Supergirl and Thunder, women’s boxing’s most talked-about stars, Anissa Pierce showed us she’s not afraid to speak up and out at yesterday’s weigh-in.”_

_“Peter, I don’t know if you know this, but if we’re talking TKOs… I think my girl Anissa has already delivered one. After a pretty tepid response from Supergirl, Thunder gave the situation a piece of her mind forcefully and unapologetically, and I was flashing back to Jefferson Pierce speaking about food-insecure schoolchildren to the Congressional…”_

Mike turns off their rented Suburban and looks out at the sea of faces surrounding a single, roped aisle leading to the locker rooms. It’s bout night in the Big Easy, and tickets are sold out for _Pierce v Danvers._ It’s a bigger showing than the last world title match, and Kara’s sure _that_ will at least help her with Lex when this is all finally over. She’s tired of waiting in purgatory.

Kara’s on enemy turf, and the crowd reminds her enthusiastically as soon as she steps into fading evening, and while Lex’s media team has filled plenty of seats with a pro-Supergirl contingent, it’s nowhere near enough to put a dent in the energy of Thunder fans screaming _Pierce! Pierce! Pierce!_ over an impressive assortment of profane and rude comments. The rowdy vibe seems to infuse the whole venue, with a deep roar rising up every now and then, audible from the locker rooms below the arena.

Lar monologues at her in a malicious stream of consciousness while Mike wraps her hands and tapes her gloves. She doesn’t need any of that tonight, though. All she needs to remember is that if she doesn’t win, her family will suffer. She can’t—won’t—allow that to happen.

Her pad coach takes her through drills while the seconds wind down until the big moment, with the referee stopping in the locker room to talk rules. She kind of listens, but mostly tries to get in the right headspace for the precious seconds while Lar is mercifully silent.

Finally, she’s led by production assistants down a long hall and out into the arena, bigger than anyplace she’s boxed yet. The roaring response to her appearance is overwhelmingly jeers, but she lets that slide off her as she takes in the lights, the ring, the cameras. Her entrance music is Lar’s pick… the inspiring _Should’ve Been a Cowboy,_ which lands like a boulder with the New Orleans crowd.

While the banjos twang and after she makes it into the ring, Supergirl rolls her shoulders and jogs in place as the lights change to announce the champ’s entrance, and the energy in the room lurches into deafening cheers.

Thunder’s entrance music for this bout, _Better in Color_ by Lizzo, plays over the loudspeakers. Kara’s heard it before, but from what she can hear of the lyrics in this context, it sounds like a purposeful choice. Lar’s acting like the song physically hurts him.

Framed by purple and yellow lights pulsing in the shape of soundwaves that match the music, Anissa Pierce enters the arena like she owns it, illuminated by the spotlight and looking like a deity in her purple top and white, yellow, and purple shorts embroidered with THUNDER on the front and PIERCE on the back of the waistband.

Even though they’ve already met, this Thunder _looks_ bigger, distinctively less friendly than the woman who’d sat across from her in a white linen restaurant or even the agitated boxer at the weigh-in press conference. She glances at the crowd and, near the champ’s corner, Kara spots Pierce’s wife sitting stiffly in a ringside chair. Grace Washington-Choi is even more stunning in person than in print or video, dressed in a black button-down and black skinny jeans for the occasion, MRS. THUNDER emblazoned in white font on the shirt’s pocket.

Throwing a few half-hearted combos to keep her arms moving, Kara twists away from Grace Washington-Choi, and she just barely sees the edge of Lena’s dark hair before she has to turn yet again, gulping in a deep breath to avoid those green eyes. Lena’s watched her fight before—that’s nothing new. It’s just that she’s sitting in the same spot ringside that Grace is for Anissa, and her stupid brain has to point that out, loudly, until she gives her chin a couple pops with her glove.

Lar leans to her ear from behind, his hands heavy on her shoulders. “She’s all show. Time for a lesson in real boxing, huh?”

For a split second, Kara worries that he saw her thinking about Lena, but that’s absurd, and she refocuses on Thunder.

“Let her know why they call you Girl of Steel,” he adds, patting her back as both fighters approach the center of the ring.

“All right, ladies, let’s have a good, clean fight. No funny business. We went over the rules in the locker rooms, obey my commands at all times, protect yourself at all times. Blue corner, ready?”

Anissa nods curtly.

“Red corner, ready?”

Kara grunts, “Ready.”

“Twenty seconds out, let’s go.”

On her final stop to her corner, Mike’s standing below the ropes, smirking up at her. He’s wearing one of those Make Boxing Great Again hats and tips it at the fighter. “Cut her down to size, Danvers.”

_How romantic._ She nods, and then notices Lex is standing next to him. The Commissioner tilts his chin up and says, “This is where you show us you’ve got what it takes, that you’re worth the money, or this is all gone. Remember that.”

Like she could forget. Stomach twisting, Kara skips any final pep talk from Lar and turns back to Anissa Pierce, lifting her gloves into position.

Thunder is the only thing standing between her and some freedom, some room to live the life she wants. Failure means staying in Smallville forever, probably marrying Mike, popping out three kids and, if she’s lucky, living a relatively sedentary, complacent life. She takes the rage and dread that that thought inspires and focuses it into a ball in her stomach, a molten hot ember to fuel her through a potentially life-changing fight.

In the first round, she barely throws a punch outside of keeping up on points.

Not because she couldn’t, but because this is the first time Thunder’s meet Steel, and she wants Anissa to _know_ how she got that nickname. Not because of Clark Kent.

Pierce lands combo after combo on her gloves, her ribs, her cheek—but Kara’s honestly becoming more relaxed as they go, because even though the champ is starting to come at her full throttle, face tightening, the punches are nowhere near as bad as she’d imagined. She’s surprised when Anissa gets in a clean cross, splitting Kara’s lip, but Supergirl easily dances out of the way of the next swing, and then it’s time to take off the training wheels.

When Thunder fumbles a step and an opening presents itself, Kara throws a hard, controlled left to the ribs, and then clocks Anissa cleanly across the jaw with her right, nearly taking her down. Thunder backs off for the rest of the round, wrapping the taller boxer up whenever they get to close.

“She’s not so scary, see that?” says Lar as Kara sips water in their corner between bells. “Now quit teasing and drive your point home. I wanna see her _flat_ on the canvas.”

“Ten seconds out, round two,” shouts the official.

* * *

“That’s it, that’s it, keep moving. I wanna see those hands,” yells Malia, hands cupped around her mouth.

Hitting Supergirl is, to Anissa’s surprise, _actually_ like hitting a block of steel. She’s leaner than Tori Whale, but still somehow bigger. The older boxer knows she’s in trouble on the first clean punch, when Kara’s face barely moves under her cross—but she’s been here before, she reminds herself. Whale presented a similar problem. She’s just got to adjust and go to the body when Supergirl takes her bait. That’s what Gambi would say, if he were here.

Speaking of Gambi, returning to Team Thunder’s corner is a near-surreal experience each time, with Lala’s inscrutable face looking back at her instead of the older man’s perpetually worried, familiar one. The younger trainer offers some advice, but mostly they hype each other back and forth between the third and fourth round.

“You got this, this is _your_ house,” he concludes as she returns to the ring. “Don’t lose your head.”

Danvers has a particularly ominous look on her face as she comes at Anissa in a flurry in the fifth, a far different beast from the sluggish bear she’d been sparring in the first round. Even though Anissa is still fast enough to block the majority of punches, even that _hurts,_ and she feels the breath getting pushed out of her lungs as Kara hooks into her body repeatedly.

In her breathless haze somewhere during the seventh, she lifts her arm to try to counter the tail end of a combo, but it’s a mistake—Danvers smashes her right glove into Anissa’s side so hard that the boxer feels something snap, and the crowd echoes her pained gasp with a low _ooh._ Fire blooms from the spot, up and down her whole side, and all of a sudden, every breath is accompanied by a sharp burn.

“Probably cracked, at minimum,” says Stitch at the end of the round, worriedly exchanging glances with Malia as Anissa groans.

“We gotta call it. You’re gonna get yourself _really_ hurt,” warns her sparring partner and friend. “Anissa, look at me. We should call it, right now.”

The expression on Malia’s face and the desperate tone of her voice is almost enough to make Anissa relent, to agree, but then she remembers: This is the World Championship. Any other fight, and it would be just another loss. But this? Losing her title to _Lar Gand’s_ chosen heir by towel in round seven?

“Nah,” she gasps, lifting her chin. “Let me finish this. It’s my name, Mali. My dad’s name. Lala, please—you know. Tell them.”

The trainer studies her face for a second or two, frowning and with his arms crossed. She knows what he’s thinking, what they’re all thinking: This is a moment like the one that could’ve saved Jefferson Pierce from his end. The question is whether his daughter will follow his footsteps _that_ closely or not. Anissa hopes Lala understands that she’s beyond pride in this, to the point that she’s _begging._ She may not be able to win, but this can’t be how she goes down. Not yet.

“Let her do it,” concludes Lala, seemingly seeing what he needs. “She can do it.”

Malia’s grimacing when Anissa heads back into the ring.

* * *

“She’s on fumes, look at her,” Lar purrs into her ear before the tenth round. “You’re up on points, and there’s no way she makes up the deficit. Take her out _now.”_

Even though Thunder looks like Hell in hightops, Kara’s definitely feeling the fight, more so than she has in a long time. Pierce is smart and fast, and she’s managed to cut open Kara’s face pretty good, but mostly, Supergirl is just impressed the other boxer is still standing. It’s not the top tier fight she’s been hoping for, but there are moments where she sees flashes of the version of Thunder that could give her a run for her money, like that boxer is still in there somewhere, and a small part of Kara had held off until now, hoping to see more.

Lar’s still talking at her: “Do it for your _family._ Anissa Pierce is the thing standing between you and a better life for Eliza. You make sure Thunder falls, hard. Think about everything, everyone who’s tried to hold you down. I want you to take it out on her fucking head.”

That, the fighter can certainly do. She has an Arya-Stark-style list to fill that need. Kara nods as her mouthpiece goes back between her teeth, and she gets one last wave from the ref before the next bell rings.

The crowd doesn’t seem to know what to do with the match, with most of the arena almost murmuring at them, a low hum that vibrates in time with Kara’s adrenaline as she watches Thunder limp towards her. She can barely keep her left arm up, but that’s not Kara’s problem right now. Supergirl needs to win, and a points victory just won’t cut it. Not if she wants to truly prove to Lex that she deserves a little more lead rope, a little room to fucking breathe.

She gives no such mercy to Thunder, who’s audibly gasping as Kara bullies her around the mat, mildly impressed that the three or four times she sets up Anissa to take her down, the older boxer manages to get out of the way. Thunder doesn’t have the strength left to block, but she’s still somehow ducking and weaving effectively, until there’s just seconds left.

_“Stop pussyfootin’ around and end this!”_ roars Lar, slamming a hand on the ring.

A red mist geysers from Thunder’s mouth when Supergirl hits her clean across the cheek, and the effect overtakes her entire field of vision as Kara lets the arena, the trainers, the ref fade away. Pierce just _won’t_ go down—Kara’s clearly going to win, but the other boxer is stubbornly in this fight, taking the punishment and refusing to just fucking go to the mat, even though she _looks_ as though a strong wind might do the trick.

Like so many others, Thunder is squarely between Supergirl and what she needs, so Kara lets the floodgates fall, thinking in turn of each bloocksucking toxicity in her life as she knocks away Pierce’s gloves and delivers punishing hooks into her body: Mike. _Ribs._ Lar. _Ribs._ Her sister. _Chin._ Lex. _Chin._ Lex _fucking_ Luthor. _Temple._

Kara realizes she’s screaming, roaring really, as she’s midway through a final, ferocious cross. Thunder crumples to the ground, but something’s wrong. The redness clears from her vision and mind, and she hears a low murmuring from the audience; only Lar is yelling that she’s won. She turns and sees Pierce is still down, and instead of doing the count, the ref’s calling for the match doctor. Blood’s dripping from her glove to the mat, and when her eyes find Lena Luthor’s in the audience, electrified emeralds widened in horror, Kara knows something is very, very wrong.

* * *

With just seconds left to go, Anissa feels a shift in Supergirl’s energy; she bursts from a controlled, dominant performance into a frenzied, overwhelming flurry of movement, brutal and unending. Anissa’s attempts to keep away from the onslaught walk her into a corner, and she can’t move, can barely block as the contender rains combos on her, slamming her gloves into the spot where her ribs are already on fire, and it’s such a blindingly hot pain that Anissa can’t think, she can’t _breathe._

Danvers nails her in the chin with a second right hook so hard her head snaps back as her vision explodes in reds and blacks, the back of her skull bouncing against the corner pole, and she almost falls, halfway holding herself up on the ropes, but then she loses her grip and slides off to one knee, gasping desperately for breath.

She expects to hear the ref start the count, but instead she hears Supergirl shouting, the ref yells, “Stop, stop!”, and then it’s—

* * *

_“Ladies and gentlemen, please remain in your seats until further notice. We need to keep the aisles clear so EMTs can reach the stage if needed.”_

Up until the very last second, Grace had waited for her wife’s trainer to throw in the towel. It was so clear—Anissa could barely throw a punch.

And then, Thunder had been kneeling on the mat when Kara Danvers, supposed golden girl, struck her once more on the side of the head, and as Anissa dropped like a puppet cut from her strings, the audience erupted in an outraged roar, nearly stampeding. The ref had been a moment too late in verbally calling off the other boxer, but it was still a blatant enough offense for an instant disqualification—a small mercy that means no one’s celebrating, like in the video of Lar Gand with gloves in the air over Jefferson Pierce’s lifeless body.

No. Grace can’t make that comparison right now, because it doesn’t apply. It can’t.

The audience is unsettlingly quiet, but the two boxers’ teams are shouting at each other on the other side of the ring, on the verge of coming to blows as security guards rush to intervene. The match doctor slides under the ropes to begin assessing Anissa’s injuries.

Grace nearly throws up when he checks her wife’s pulse. _This can’t be happening._ She starts pushing her way toward the ring in a fog, her heartbeat thudding between her ears.

Malia says something from the ropes, and the security guards wave Grace through at the end of the row of seats. She practically dives into the ring, but gets just a glimpse of her wife before Lala is in her way, shaking his head and crowding into her space. His expression is taut, beads of sweat shining on his forehead.

“No-no-no-no,” he’s saying, firmly grabbing her wrists to walk her back. “No, seriously Grace, no. Give ‘em space.”

“Lala, please—”

“No!” he yells directly in her face, and it’s startling enough that she stops fighting his grip. “No. Just relax, let them do their thing. Relax.”

What she can’t see as she lets him hold her in place is a doctor checking Anissa for signs of brain activity, frowning over her weak pulse. She can’t see the way the fighter’s eyes aren’t reacting properly to light, and she doesn’t see the amount of blood leaking from Anissa’s nose. But Lala’s expression and the doctors’ silence tells her everything, really.

Grace _knows_ there’s an ambulance on standby at all of these fights, but it feels like hours pass before the EMTs wheel a stretcher down the aisle to the ring.

“Grace. Grace.” Now Malia’s got two hands on her shoulders, gripping tightly as Lala moves back to the circle of hunched team members. “Grace, I need you to breathe. Slowly.”

“Is she-is she—“

“She’s alive,” replies the older woman calmly, though her arms are shaking. “Can you ride in the ambulance and answer questions for the EMTs? We can call Lynn, or Jen.”

“I’m fine.” Grace sucks in a shuddering breath. “Let me go with her. But we should call Lynn and Jen anyway. Hanh’s at, um…” She puts a hand to her forehead, eyes screwing shut as her brain refuses to cooperate. “She’s at the, Apple Tree Care Center. I’ll call them to give permission for you to pick her up. I don’t want her at the hospital for this. Can you take her home, until Jen and Khalil get back? Is that okay?”

“Yeah, I got you, don’t worry about any of that. Go with your wife.”

People are looking at her with pinched, drawn expressions as she follows the gurney up the aisle. They’d put Anissa into a neck and back brace, and she’s unnervingly pale under the crinkly blanket covering most of her body.

“Sending you love, ma,” calls someone from the stands, and a chorus of encouragement rises.

“We’ll say a prayer for you, Thunder.”

“Take care of our girl, Mrs. Grace.”

The artist can’t look at any of the faces as she passes, sure she’s going to lose it if she does, but the well wishes help with each step, a small gust of their energy carrying her seemingly leadened feet.

Anissa doesn’t wake up on the way to the hospital, while the EMTs flutter around, poking machines and speaking in what might as well be another language to Grace. She doesn’t wake up before the trauma team wheels her into a room and asks Grace to stand outside, and no, she can’t give the boxer a kiss before the door closes.

It’s the first time Grace has faced a crisis alone since they got married, and she’s woefully unprepared for the drama unfolding beyond the window to the room. She feels suddenly, starkly _alone._ Lynn will have to fly in from California again, Peter Gambi is upstairs in his own hospital bed. Jen and Khalil are at campgrounds three hours away, and Malia is picking up her daughter. She’d gotten so used to what she never had before, a troop of people, of loved ones, and the series of events that seemed to be leaving Anissa alone in her quest to fight Supergirl actually leaves _Grace_ alone.

The first doctor to come out and speak to her has a kind face and gray goatee with its own little cap covering his chin as he explains in a low tone, “Fractured orbital bone, two cracked ribs, grade-3 concussion, ruptured kidney, numerous contusions. If we’re lucky, and even though these are _serious_ injuries, she’ll be able to recover without surgery, just time and rest. We’ll need to keep her here for at least forty-eight hours.”

Grace is nodding, but she’s also _keenly_ aware of how much she’d let PA Washington handle the medical questions in the household, more than once questioning a pediatrician into near hysterics over the last couple years. All she can think to ask is, “Are we talking permanent damage?”

“There’ll be significant scarring, for example in the kidneys, which could affect function in the long term, exacerbating the natural deterioration of age, and there’s always a chance a concussion like this has lingering effects. Make sense?”

“Yeah. Thank you.”

“She’s pretty out of it from the morphine right now, but… she’s gonna feel this.” The attending tilts his head, eyes dropping to Grace’s middle. “This is your wife?”

The artist nods, self-consciously putting a hand over the subtle swell.

“You should take it easy. This is a lot to handle. Can I have a nurse check your blood pressure?”

“I’m fine, thank you, really.”

When Grace returns to Anissa’s bedside, she sits for a long time, in silence except for the beep and whir of machines that tell her the boxer’s alive, despite the deep stillness of her body. She wants to cry, but she knows once she lets go, she won’t be able to stop. Her phone’s blowing up, the screen constantly scrolling as messages and missed calls flow in, but she just watches her wife’s chest rise and fall, never more grateful for such a basic thing as breathing.

* * *

Lena’s car pulls to a stop outside the locked gate of a tall chain link fence with barbed wire on top. Inside, piles and piles of old cars and other metal scrap make a miniature mountain landscape, and the Luthor can hear glass smashing every few seconds from somewhere amongst the rubble. After politely and then not so politely shrugging off her driver’s concerns, Lena circles the fence on foot until she finds a cut portion, just big enough for her to slip through without ripping her Vera Wang dress.

She picks her way through the junkyard, reminding herself to check on when she last had a tetanus shot later, and finds what she’s looking for in the open area in front of the huge machine that flattens old ATVs and airplane engines into metal blocks.

Kara Danvers has a collection of empty glass bottles piled at her feet, and she’s launching them one by one into the crusher, facing away from Lena as she approaches.

The heiress is halfway across the space before her foot knocks into something and catches the boxer’s attention. When Kara turns, her eyes and face are puffy red, and the glassy look there tells Lena she’s been drinking.

“How’d you find me?”

Lena hesitates, but quickly decides the truth is the best option here. “Your phone... is corporate property.”

The fighter groans and almost throws said spy device, but it unlocks when she looks down at it, and instead she waves the displayed article headline at Lena: “KARA DANVERS: SUPER HERO OR SUPER VILLAIN?” The picture underneath shows Thunder kneeling on the mat, Kara’s glove hurtling towards her bloodied face.

Lena touches her arm, and she doesn’t take it away even when her friend goes rigid. “Kara…”

“I didn’t mean to hurt her. Not like that, I mean. I-I-I just blacked out, it was like…” The blonde grabs her forehead with both hands and groans. “No, it _was_ me. I did this.”

“Kara, I’ve known you practically my whole life. I know you didn’t mean to—“

“I did, though.” The boxer picks up another bottle and launches it into the machine while her friend waits. “I _wanted_ her to fall down and not get back up.”

Tears are stinging Lena’s eyes as she considers the woman in front of her, like a desaturated version of the Kara Danvers that she knew growing up. _That_ Kara had been sweet and friendly to a fault, never far from the older sister she saw as a god among kids. The Kara in front of her… Tired. Reserved. Angry. And of course, like with almost everyone else in Smallville and so many other places where L-Corp reigns supreme, it’s the Luthor family that’s done this to her. Lena’s family.

“Kara,” she sighs, stopping the boxer from throwing another bottle. “Look at me, please.”

Her friend’s hair is disheveled and looks more like a bushy mane when she turns again, reluctantly, and Lena patiently waits for blue eyes to rise and meet hers.

“If there’s one thing my malignant cyst of a brother is good at, it’s drawing out the worst in people to get what he wants. He thrives off of it, and so does Lar; you don’t. That’s what I—that’s why I enjoy your company so much. In my world, I don’t spend a lot of time with good people.”

Kara shakes her head, eyes closing, and coughs through something that sounds like maybe it would’ve been a sob. “Lena, I did that to her… in front of _her wife.”_

“And I’m not giving you a free pass for that, Kara, but… you’ve been under an obscene amount of pressure for a very, very long time.”

“I-I have to go to the hospital. I have to apologize to her. It’s just gotta be—”

Once more, Lena folds her fingers over Kara’s wrist to stop the boxer in her tracks. Kara had been attempting to push past her, and now they’re standing in each other’s space, eyes locked. “You cannot do that right now, Kara. You’ll just make things worse, drag out more press. We can contact Thunder’s team to arrange something later, privately. Okay?”

“Okay. Okay.” Kara’s shoulders droop slightly, and she rubs the back of her neck with one of those wide hands. “I, just um… I’m so sorry. I just need them to know that I am so, so sorry.”

The blonde looks so piteous that Lena doesn’t think twice before wrapping her in a hug, rubbing wide circles between Kara’s broad shoulders, and then she pulls back to swipe her thumbs over the fighter’s wet, reddened cheeks. “I know, Kara. I know this isn’t you. We’ll figure it out, okay?”

Kara nods blearily, and it wouldn’t be until many, many days later that her brain honed back in on the word ‘we’ in Lena’s sentence.

* * *

Everything _hurts._ _Everything_ hurts.

When her eyes open, wherever she is, it’s dark. Anissa can make out pale walls and dimly glowing machine lights, but not much else. Shapes, furniture maybe. It’s not a familiar place. Just that is exhausting, though, and she feels herself drifting back towards sleep as her eyelids droop.

She’s vaguely aware that it’s a long time before her eyes can open again and before her neck responds to her misty brain’s commands. When she does finally turn her head to look at the other side of the room, she sees a vaguely human shape in a chair, and when she musters the energy to squint, her eyes can finally make out more detail.

It’s Grace—asleep, maybe. The artist shifts and jerkily lifts her head from her shoulder with a wince. Anissa’s shuffling her feet under the stiff blanket without realizing it, and the noise seems to wake her wife. It certainly isn’t her voice that gets Grace’s attention, because the boxer’s throat and mouth feel like sandpaper, completely unbeholden to her instructions to speak when she makes the attempt.

“Baby?” whispers Grace, almost as hoarsely as the fighter feels, and she lurches to her feet. “Anissa?”

“Hey,” she manages to get out, barely. “Whuh?”

Grace shushes her, hands hovering over Anissa’s face like she’s desperate, but afraid to touch her. _Why_ is Grace afraid to touch her? Why is she flat on her back? The answer seems like it should be easy, but her head’s beginning to throb with pain, and she’s already tired enough to fall back asleep.

“You’re in the hospital,” her wife explains in a stronger tone, after clearing her throat. “You’re hurt pretty bad, and you have a concussion. Don’t try to move, babe, it’s okay.”

The fight. _Kara Danvers._ It filters back, a trickle instead of a flood. Title fight. Broken ribs, the Girl of Steel baring her teeth. A knee on the mat. Then nothing. The pain radiating from her chest makes her wonder if she’d been shot, but then Grace’s voice cuts through again:

“Danvers hit you with a bad punch. They DQ’d her out of the fight,” says Grace, as if reading her sluggish mind. The artist is sniffling and leaning against the side of the bed, and Anissa wants to respond, but she’s already slipping into unconsciousness again, the feeling like fingertips scrabbling uselessly against ice.

When her eyes open again, it’s day instead of night, and she’s foggily surprised to find her mother sitting where Grace had been what seems like a second ago. The pain level throughout her body, however, remains unchanged, and she groans in hopes someone will get the message and fix that. Her mother hits the button on what looks like a PCA pump, and she’s vaguely aware that Lynn is saying something to her before she drifts back to sleep. She has no inkling of what it was.

This happens again and again, like a weird View Master version of her life—sometimes she opens her eyes and Jen’s in the chair, sometimes Stitch or Padman. She’s vaguely aware that there are other people in the room at times, but it isn’t until the time her eyes open and find two huge, almond-shaped eyes gazing back that she manages to keep her own open.

Someone slips an ice chip between her lips, and it’s like manna on her dry tongue. She watches Hanh’s eyes follow the hand of whoever is giving her the ice, but eventually it stops, and Anissa’s mouth has just enough moisture for her to try a testing, “Hey.” It’s mangled, but it works.

“Hi, Mama,” says the four-year-old quietly, cautiously, like when Grace tells her to use her naptime voice. “You’ve been sleeping all day.”

Anissa wants to laugh, but the inhale makes her chest sear with pain, like someone stuck her between the ribs with a hot poker, and she has to grunt and gasp through it. Hanh looks scared when the boxer’s eyes refocus on her, and then she notices her wife sitting behind the kid on the edge of her hospital bed. She can’t quite make out Grace’s expression, whether because of her brain or her eyes, she isn’t sure, but she looks back down at their daughter and manages to lift three of her fingers off the blanket.

Hanh dutifully grips her hand, looking more solemn than a kid that young should ever have to, and Anissa manages a smile for her. It hurts. “Yeah, I did sleep all day. You?”

_“Bà nội_ gave me a brownie.”

“A brownie? That sounds so good.” Anissa can’t stifle the groan that rips from her throat when the muscles in her side seize and burn, and someone lifts Hanh out of her vision. There’s some chatter and movement as the boxer fights losing consciousness again, and when the wave of pain passes, she opens her eyes to see just Grace, who’s scooted closer to her on the bed. The expression she couldn’t quite make out previously is a small, relieved smile.

“Hanh has always been able to get you up and about in no time,” says the artist, rueful. “Do you remember what I told you last night?”

“Big hurt. Danvers DQ.”

“Pretty much.” Grace takes Anissa’s hand from the bed and carefully lays it on her lap, so the fighter’s palm rests against her stomach. “It was a lot more complicated from the outside.”

“I’m sorry,” croaks the boxer, and she wants to say it with so much more force than the whisper at which it comes out of her lips, but anything more than sipping at air feels like breathing lava. “I’m so sorry.”

“Mm-mm,” says her wife, quickly. She squeezes the boxer’s hand. “There’s a therapist’s office begging for us to have that conversation sometime soon, babe, but right now…” Grace pauses to wipe at her eyes with her free hand. “Right now, I need you to be that stubborn asshole who makes me _so mad._ I don’t care if it’s out of pure spite, but you’re going to get better, and you’re going to get past this, okay? You never have to apologize for this again, if you just come out of it.”

Anissa nods and squeezes Grace’s hand back; it’s the best she can do.

“Because I’ve been pregnant alone and raised a newborn by myself, and I’m not fucking doing that again, okay?” continues Grace through a watery laugh, and the lightness in her voice has the fighter smiling again, despite the aches. “I want weird midnight snacks delivered to me in bed. I want footrubs. I want to whine at someone who has no choice but to listen. And I can’t do that until you get better. Deal?”

“For you? Anything,” confirms Anissa, and finally, finally, her wife leans down to give her a kiss.


	3. The Count

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Teams Thunder and Supergirl deal with the fallout from the world title bout in their own ways, and then meet face-to-face for the first time since.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for being patient! This took longer than I had anticipated. There's a lot going on here.
> 
> Also, thanks so very much for the comments, kudos, reads!

_SMALLVILLE, KANSAS_

Technically, Kara Danvers _hadn’t_ lost to Thunder.

Also technically… she hadn’t _won,_ either.

The narrative that she’d clearly have TKO’d Pierce or won by points if not for the illegal hit was cold comfort in the face of her employer’s ultimatum, and it was even worse for assuaging Kara’s guilt over that final, devastating blow.

Her supporters were staunch in their belief that Supergirl deserved to win the round, bad punch or no, and some went further to insist that the DQ itself was unfair, somehow—which was frankly absurd. She’d seen the footage… it was bad. The way some people talked about it, though, Kara almost didn’t believe they had watched the same match. Thunder hadn’t just slipped down to one knee and caught the tail end of a combo; she’d been kneeling there for a beat long enough that no reasonable person, at least no reasonable person who would be in a world title boxing match, could argue there wasn’t time to pull back. But Kara had let her anger get the better of her and sabotaged what had almost been the win she needed, making it a ruinous night for both boxers.

Whatever the popular discourse, the fight had certainly raised Supergirl’s profile, and ultimately, that was the last gasp of hope she held onto when Lex Luthor’s assistant had finally scheduled a meeting to discuss her… _career._

The front desk staff said they’d been expecting her, leading the out-of-place boxer wearing a hoodie and joggers into a large, empty conference room with high-backed brown leather chairs around a massive glass and wood table. Floor-to-ceiling windows on one side of the conference room look down on the first floor lobby, and Kara stands watching people come and go as she waits.

At some point—Kara had missed the woman’s entry into the space—a brief flurry of gesturing arms caught her attention, and she sees Samantha Arias, Lena’s friend and a fellow high school classmate, arguing animatedly with a set of burly, besuited security guards. The boxer almost runs out of the room to try to intervene when one of them puts a hand on Sam’s wrist, but the tall, slender Arias gives him an impressive sock on the shoulder that has both men backing off, palms raised in the universal “calm down” pose.

“Kara, thank you for coming in today.” Lex’s voice nearly startles her through the window, but she manages to turn without bumping the plate glass.

“Lex,” she greets, a little breathless.

“Please, take a seat,” offers the Commissioner with a magnanimous wave of his hand. She’s somewhat surprised that there’s no one behind him; at the very least, he usually invites Lar to this type of thing. It’s unclear, in the moment, whether his solitude is good or bad.

“Just us?” asks the fighter as calmly as she can manage.

“Is that a problem?”

“No.” Kara sniffs and sits in one of the admittedly quite comfy chairs across the table from him.

For what seems like an unreasonably long amount of time, Lex stares at her, and she stares back. His expression is just a small, crooked smile that grows unsettling as the seconds tick by, like one of those “magic eye” pictures, where a new image would form if you stare long enough at the original. A nightmarish grimace seems to leer out from behind his face.

But eventually, whatever he seems to be waiting for must appear in some form or other, because Lex blinks, leans forward, and begins, “So tell me, Ms. Danvers: What do you think I should do with you, given the outcome of your Thunder bout?”

Kara sighs, touching her glasses as she drops her eyes to the table. “I think it was clear that I would have won… if not for the punch.”

“I agree it is clear that you _didn’t_ win,” replies the Commissioner thinly, inscrutably. He drums his fingers on the table, the movement spidery in her peripheral vision. “It’s now marked as a loss on your record.”

“Pierce isn’t undefeated, either.”

Lex tilts his head, regarding her with narrowed eyes, as if the quick counterpunch had woken him from sleep. “So what should I do about our arrangement, then? Go with the loss outcome?”

Sighing, Kara weighs the options for her response. She doesn't dare argue too forcefully for it to be considered delivery of the requested W. She won’t just roll over and let him take the family’s farm, either. She _hates_ this type of politics. “Let me challenge her again.”

“I’m listening.”

“The plot is already there. People talk about it more than bouts than are actually scheduled. You said you wanted big headlines. If you dump me now, all that media goes away.”

The tiniest flicker of a smile twitches at Lex’s lips. Rather than the feeling one might get after pleasing a parent, Kara is left with the impression of having given in to a local con’s scheme. “True. But she can avoid you for a long time and still maintain her title. Years, even. Even the most die-hard fans will lose interest. There’s a window.”

“Let me worry about that. Just tell me our deal is still in place, _please_ Mr. Luthor.”

“I’ll give you six months to land the match, but because you didn’t win the previous one like agreed, I’m cutting your personal pay until then.”

Kara’s teeth click together so hard she almost takes out a chunk out of her tongue. _Like my personal pay makes a damn bit of difference._ For Lex Luthor, her personal pay was pocket change. For her, it meant no gas for her Ford. But she nods amiably and just says, “Okay.”

“Good. I’ll have the lawyers draw up the amendments to our contract.”

Except, with everything that’s happened, there’s a flicker of fire in her throat, stoked by the patronizing way Lex is regarding her across a table that probably costs more than she makes in a year, and she doesn’t stop herself before adding: “So what does this look like, long term?”

“Excuse me?” Some of the magnanimity fades from the Commissioner’s face. “What does what look like?”

Kara swallows the lump in her throat, pulse thudding between her ears, but presses on: “If I lose, I lose everything… but how much do I have to _win_ before we get the farm back?”

There’s a beat, and Lex’s eyes give a curious little flash as he says casually, “Until you can afford it.”

And with that inspiring answer rattling around her head, Kara’s halfway across the building’s annoyingly expansive parking lot before she notices someone leaning on the roof of their car, and she slows down to get a better look.

“Sam?”

The tall brunette’s head jerks up, and she turns, looking for a moment almost… scared. Thankfully, that fades quickly, replaced by a bright smile. “Oh, Kara—hi.”

“Hey, sorry—didn’t mean to startle you.” The boxer offers a small, awkward wave, and moves closer. “Long time no see.”

“Yeah, lots of loans to close. You meeting with Lex?”

The blonde nods, then shrugs. Sam looks a little unsettled, her hair slightly puffed and jacket askew. “The usual. Are you… okay? Thought I saw you putting some guards in their place back there.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. Professional disagreement.”

It’s not convincing, but Kara doesn’t press. The question seems to have jolted something loose in Sam’s mind, because she smooths her hair back down and gives a wider smile. “But, anyway—so good to see you. Lena says you’re training so much you don’t get out a lot. I think I’ve seen more of you on TV than around town.”

“Ah, yeah. You know.” Kara tries not to roll her eyes at herself. “Between that and keeping up around the farm, not a lot of time left over.”

Now that whatever seemed to upset Sam earlier is apparently out of mind, the taller woman is grinning at Kara with an unplaceable slyness. “Well, I’m having a birthday party in a couple months, in Kansas City. Consider yourself invited, Danvers.”

Kara just nods, feeling oddly affected by the gesture.

“I’ll have Lena text you the details.” Sam turns back to her car, and the boxer’s just about to leave when she hears an added, “And don’t bring Mike!”

_NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA_

“You’re s-slippin’, kid.”

“Just pacing myself, _old man.”_

Rolling her eyes as she looks up from her phone, Jen calls across the therapy gym, “More walk, less talk, please.

Gambi and Anissa’s physical deficiencies after their separate medical emergencies aren’t quite the same, but that doesn’t stop the boxer and her trainer from figuring out ways to compete with each other through recovery, even if they’ve pushed themselves a little too much and subsequently gotten scolded by the PT several times.

Better that than not trying, Jen supposes as she watches the two move around the small track. Eight weeks out from the Supergirl fight, and Anissa can handle three walking laps per Gambi’s one at twelve weeks past his stroke. Her main issues were stamina and pain level, whereas Gambi’s were coordination and balance. They were doing so well, though, that Jen could even allow herself some of that familiar old annoyance at their alpha jock attitudes.

That night, someone had texted Jen a short cell phone video of Supergirl’s near-fatal punch against her sister’s skull, the sound easily audible even from several rows back, before she’d even seen the missed calls from Malia. She’d spent a frantic ten minutes thinking Anissa was dead before the family friend answered her call back, but Twitter had been abuzz with false news of her demise for two more hours before the corrections started rolling.

And through all that and one maddeningly long car ride, Jen had still feared she’d walk into the hospital to find an empty bed—but there had been Anissa, face obscured by an oxygen mask, tubes and wires running between her body and chirping machines. Alive, mostly.

What followed had been (was _still)_ a painstaking process of recovery—more pain than much else for Anissa at first—with lots of anger and raging along the way. That much was to be expected of a world class athlete forced to be still for weeks, but it helps that Gambi and Anissa are recovering together, able to poke fun at each other in heavy moments when everyone else would be aghast at mocking a post-stroke patient and a woman who’d skated along the edge of a traumatic brain injury.

Seven laps in, with a goal of ten, and Anissa’s covered in sweat as she passes the chair where Jen’s sitting, waiting. Her older sister insists up and down that she doesn’t want or need anyone to come to her sessions, but Jen’s smarter than that, and loves her sister more than that, so she shows up whenever she has the free time. Most days, she just hangs out and helps with timing Gambi and her sister, but occasionally the college trackstar has had to whip out her own trainer chops, verbally shaking Anissa out of funks or sour moods. (Maybe once or twice physically.)

“Gambi’s not wrong—you’re about fifteen seconds over Monday,” Jen informs her sister, gently, when the fighter finishes her laps and stands with hands on knees, panting.

“Yeah, I didn’t sleep great last night.” Anissa straightens, cheeks puffing out as she exhales. She’s about to go on, no doubt with some self-deprecating joke, but something seems to catch her eye, and she calls to one of the nurses, “Could I get some volume on that? Just this part.”

Javier, amateur boxer himself and Anissa’s favorite nurse, grabs a remote control as Jen turns to see Kara Danvers, gloves on hips, talking to an HBOSports microphone held by someone off-screen.

“...keep fighting, and I think I’ve shown people that I can win without a bad shot.”

“And with Anissa Pierce on the mend, do you anticipate a new challenge to the champ in the near future?”

Kara’s eyes widen when the disembodied voice says Thunder’s name, and she lifts one of her gloves near her temple, like she’d touch her glasses if they were there. “Well, I guess it has to happen one day. I’m still number one contender, and I’m still undefeated.”

“You heard it, folks—Thunder versus Supergirl, the rematch? At least one-half of that equation is _in.”_

“Turn that shit off, Javi,” sighs Jen as Gambi finishes his fifth lap, a little under his time a day earlier. “Please.”

Anissa’s got a bit of a cloud hanging over her expression, but she gives her head a shake, and the darkness clears. “It’s fine. She can say what she wants.”

“Supergirl’s a punk,” pipes in the nurse with a dismissive wave of his hand. “And that trainer of hers is Trumpian.”

“You’re not wrong.” Anissa wipes at her chest with a towel. “But I was gonna lose that match. You know I was.”

“Rules is rules, and you can’t call it a win if you break them,” counters Javi before tossing her another one. “Would you be saying that if she popped her drug test? No. ‘Cause the rules are part of the game.”

Jen looks between the two carefully, impressed with the nurse’s argument, but her sister doesn’t seem so moved. She can relate, on some level; Jen has certainly shed her fair share of tears after tough losses. There isn’t much anyone can say in those moments to make her feel any better—but as a runner, she competes in three races per event. Anissa, on the other hand, fights less than ten bouts per year, with most of those being low-stakes charity and exhibition bouts that wouldn’t affect her record, even if she did lose them.

Luckily, there’s a deep bench surrounding the champ. Gambi seems to sense the shift in mood when he finishes his laps, and he gives Jen a nod, a silent tag-in, before approaching Anissa where she’s sitting on the gym’s small set of bleachers. Jen watches them talk quietly, sees the way Gambi puts a hand on her sister’s shoulder… She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t just a little jealous. Peter Gambi would do anything for any of the women in her family, but… He and Anissa certainly have the strongest connection. It’s not his fault. They literally _work_ together—but Jen can’t help how it reminds her of what she’s missing, too.

She shakes away the feeling when Anissa lifts her bag and trades hugs with her trainer before approaching her sister. The boxer looks a bit lighter, at least, and Jen offers her a smile as they walk together, out of the therapy gym and into the hallway of the rehabilitation center. It’s a short-term care facility with both inpatient and outpatient services, but more or less looks and feels like a hospital.

“Did you Lyft? Can I give you a ride home?” prompts the younger sister when they step out into the parking lot. It’s springtime in Louisiana, meaning the heat’s just ratcheting up again, but the temperature’s still quite pleasant after the heavy AC of the gym.

“Yeah. Thanks,” replies Anissa, quietly.

It’s been four weeks since her last seizure, a lingering effect of the concussive damage to her brain, and while Louisiana doesn’t have statutory restrictions on driving after a seizure, her neurologist had recommended waiting at least twelve weeks. Complicating things, Grace is out of town for a comic book convention, but Lynn had flown in to help. Actually, Lynn was in the process of closing her California practice to reopen shop in New Orleans, just as her daughters had been joking (and secretly hoping) she would do for months. There was a lot going on, but Jen could spare enough time to drive her sister home.

“Wanna grab anything to eat on the way home?”

“I’m good,” sighs the boxer.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Had a big breakfast.”

Jen looks over at her sister when she comes to a red light. “Anissa…”

“I’m not in the mood, J. Not right now.”

“If you don’t eat, your body’s just gonna keep eating your muscles. I know you want to get back in the game, so why be like this?”

“I’m still _pissing blood,_ Jen,” snarls Anissa, loud and forceful enough that the younger sister startles. “Whether I eat a lunch or not doesn’t fucking matter much.”

“All right, that’s it.” Jen hangs a quick right turn into the parking lot of a McDonalds, swinging her car on screeching wheels until they’re (mostly) in a spot, and throws the vehicle into park.

“C’mon J, I’m tired—“

“No, no. Look at me, Anissa.” The younger sister waits until the boxer complies, and then continues, _“I’m_ tired. I’m tired of watching you pout around the house, and I’m tired of being the more mature sister in this relationship. I should be making hella mistakes right now and comin’ cryin’ to your stupid ass.”

“Wow, that’s real nice of—“

_“Listen_ to me,” interrupts the trackstar, holding up one hand in a “silence” gesture that she’s received from Lynn a thousand times. “Supergirl almost took you from us, physically, but right now, you’re letting her take _you_ from us, too.”

Sighing, Anissa lets her head drop back against her seat, but doesn’t offer further protest.

“And yeah, this all _sucks._ It really does, but… Anissa, we _miss_ you. I miss my big sister, occasional idiot though she may be.” Jen feels tears stinging at her eyes and lets them happen; she needs to let Anissa see. “I know it’s not as easy as a pep talk. I just want you back, ‘Niss.”

It’s a gamble, she knows. The doctors had warned that Anissa’s concussion had the potential to mess with her personality, short or long term, and that meant there were times as of late that her sister reacted to stress in a way that was truly outside her control—and seemed mind-bogglingly out of proportion to what was happening. But Jen had to _try_ to get through, keeping that perspective at front of mind.

Anissa stares out the windshield for a long while, chest rising and falling with long breaths, but when she looks back at her sister, she’s got shining eyes, too. “I just want to get back to my old life, J… I worry I never will.”

“I know. And I’m here to help you, not hold you back. Okay?”

“Okay,” sniffs the fighter, swiping at her eyes when a tear escapes. “Okay.”

Jen reaches across the middle console to give her a long hug, sniffling herself, and concludes that they should bring Hanh home a vanilla cone, since they’re already in the parking lot. Anissa gets one, too.

_CHICAGO, ILLINOIS_

It’s icy cold in the windy city as Grace hurries to open the heavy wooden door of some café—she didn’t really care to know which one, classifying it from the Google page as an establishment that was your classic “mismatched chairs and white baristas with dreadlocks” kind of place.

As difficult as it was to get over her own misgivings about therapy, given her Vietnamese upbringing’s staunch resistance to such things, Grace had researched local options and landed on Dr. Perenna, who’d been in the business of family therapy for decades. Hanh seemed to love her, Anissa didn’t dislike her, and Grace found the older woman’s energy comforting. The sessions had trotted out plenty of difficult, painful conversations, and they still had a lot of work to go.

Her current trip had almost been cancelled on account of Grace’s concern for leaving Hanh with Anissa for more than a few hours, for the first time since the Supergirl fight, though it had taken hours of Dr. Perenna’s gentle prodding for her to admit it… and then more hours facilitating resolution of that distrust between the wives. It was intense and exhausting, and they still had work to do, but as the artist got on the plane with a rare, if short-lived peace in her chest… it was all well worth the effort.

The artist shakes aside those thoughts as she spots a dark-haired woman in a high-collared coat, sitting at a small table. Lena Luthor gives her a polite wave when their eyes meet, and Grace puts in her drink order (decaf drip, a hit of half and half, no sugar) while trying not to overthink the situation. She hadn’t mentioned this little rendezvous to anyone else back home, but nonetheless, it feels somewhat momentous.

“Bit colder than Louisiana,” greets the pale, elegant woman as Grace sits across from her a minute or so later. “Thank you for meeting with me. May I call you Grace?”

“Sure,” she answers, mostly reflex. The secretive letter from Lena had been convincing enough, near-begging for Grace to sit down to talk with her about Supergirl, and it turned out they would be in Chicago at the same time. The letter, addressed specifically to her and the only Team Supergirl correspondence to arrive without an NDA requirement for further communication, had been surprising enough that Grace accepted without much thought to the consequences. That seemed less wise at the current moment. “So what can I do for you, Ms. Luthor?”

“Please, call me Lena.” The Luthor leans her elbows on the table, green eyes dropping to examine some unintelligible Sharpie graffiti before she looks back up and says, “I know that the Supergirl team isn’t in a place to ask anything of you and your wife, but I’m here, as someone who… As Kara’s friend, and a person who cares about her deeply. I am asking you to help convince Anissa to meet, to let Kara apologize in person.”

Sipping her coffee, Grace examines the heiress carefully, surprised that Lena seems at least adjacent to nervous. “I appreciate that both our stubborn boxers need to get past that match… but my wife is her own person, and if I could change her mind on anything she feels strongly about, that fight never would have happened in the first place. I’m not sure what I can do.”

Emerald eyes, surprisingly, seem to soften, and Lena puts a hand over Grace’s. “Truly, I can’t imagine what you went through that night, and Kara has a lot of work to do to make up for losing her head. But I also suspect that Anissa would benefit from forgiveness as much as Kara would, don’t you think?”

The artist certainly can’t say that she’s wrong about that, no matter how good a face Anissa puts on most days.

A flutter on her right side has the artist sliding a hand along her belly, and the reminder of her family’s stakes sends a flash of anger through her veins. “Tell me what Kara’s going to do to make it right.”

That seems to take the heiress off guard, her elegant features tightening as she raises confused eyebrows. “What she’s going… to do?”

Grace nods, putting her cup down to lean forward and pitch her voice lower, not wanting to cause a scene, but also refusing to mince words: “If I convince Anissa to meet with Kara, she apologizes, and then what? They hug it out and Kara gets her redemption? Are you sure this isn’t some part of your plan to get my wife back in the ring with Supergirl?”

“Grace, no—that’s not what this is. I’m here as Kara’s friend. I’m sorry if it came across as—“

“Look, Lena, you seem nice. You seem nicer than Lar, or that whole MABA crowd, but that’s not enough. Supergirl’s fans are still sending my family death threats, accusing Anissa of _faking_ getting hurt, and no one from your camp is saying _anything_ to stop them. Meanwhile, I’ve spent the second trimester of my pregnancy helping carry my wife to the bathroom at night because she could barely walk. So yes, besides apologizing, Lena, what is Team Danvers going to _do?”_

The green-eyed woman seems struck speechless, jaw working silently, before she manages hoarsely, “Well that’s—with the corporation’s close ties, it’s complicated to make statements abou—“

“It’s not.” Grace pushes herself to her feet, swinging her purse back over her shoulder as she looks down at the Luthor. “It’s quite simply that speaking up would alienate your market, and that’s worth more to you than what’s right. Until you and your whole crew get that, there’s no point in Kara apologizing, anyway.”

If Lena said anything to protest, Grace doesn’t hear it as she walks briskly away from the table.

_SMALLVILLE, KANSAS_

“...I just can’t look, it’s killing me-e, and ta-aking control…”

Kara’s phone trills the late 2000s pop tune from the sink while she showers, idly singing along and scrubbing her arms, head bobbing under the spray. It’s her day off, her day of attempted positivity. Attempted tranquility. She’d even downloaded some app meant to help, and maybe she’d finally open it today. Maybe.

She isn’t sure what’s inspired her rare, shining mood, but the fighter had rolled out of bed with a spring in her step, and she had breakfast with her mom and did a double lap around the homestead before hopping in the shower. There’s really no difference between this day and the one before, just her outlook. That sounds like something she read in a preview for her mindfulness app.

By the time she’s turned off the water and climbed out to towel off, toes curling into the carpeted, cream-colored bath mat, the Killers’ album is nearly over, and her muscles are feeling pleasantly loose after all that heat. As a result, she’s surprised enough to startle when the music switches to her ringtone and vibrates against the porcelain sink, rattling as loud as a cicada. The fighter slaps haphazardly at her phone, and it stops ringing, but the music doesn’t come back in, and…

“Kara?”

The fighter’s heart stops at the familiar, tinny voice, and she tries to grab her phone again, but with her wet hands, it takes _just_ long enough that she catches sight of her entire naked torso in the FaceTime screen before her thumb smashes the red End Call icon, and Lena Luthor’s face blinks away.

_Oh, God._ Kara slaps a palm to her forehead, staring at her blank phone screen as her Spotify picks up again. _“...and I won't forget you. At least I'll try and run, and run tonight…”_

Running sounds about right—running out the door and never coming back again, for sure. Before she can even begin to decide what she should do next, her phone rings again… It’s just a voice call this time. Still from Lena.

Out of sheer panic more than anything else, the boxer answers, eyes screwed shut as she croaks into the phone, “Hi… Lena.”

“Kara? Are you all right?”

“Yep. Yes. Very good.” She smashes her fist against her forehead a couple times, resisting the urge to throw the phone and instead walking into her bedroom, where she isn’t looking at a mirror image of her flushed, embarrassed face. “Listen, I, uh, I’m not sure if you… saw something… just there.”

There’s a pause that makes Kara want to throw up, and then Lena gives a soft laugh before saying in a somewhat clipped tone, “It’s fine, Kara. Nothing I haven’t seen before.” A delicate cough. “Er, well, I mean, not _yours_ of course, but…”

“You… saw my boobs, didn’t you?”

“I did, yes,” laughs the Luthor, her quick sigh crackling through the phone. “And your, um, abs—but it’s fine, really. Don’t worry about it.”

Kara sinks on her bed, rolling the unnecessary abs comment into her “things to overanalyze later” mental compartment, and replies, “Okay. Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing, Kara. I called you for a reason, anyway.” Lena’s tone shifts back to more businesslike, more controlled, and some of the warmth fades from the fighter’s cheeks. “I mean, first and foremost, I haven’t heard from you in weeks—are you all right?”

“Just training.”

Lena waits, but Kara’s _very_ good at that game, and outlasts her. “Okay. Well, I wanted to tell you: Grace Washington-Choi was in Chicago this past week, and I… had coffee with her.”

The muscles in Kara’s neck instantly tighten at the name, and the boxer has to swallow a lump that’d formed in her throat. “I told everyone to leave them alone.”

“I know, Kara, but this was just a casual conversation.”

“Yeah, but on _my_ behalf—she’s like eight months pregnant, too!”

“She’s pregnant, not feeble, Kara, honestly,” sighs Lena, and the line clicks and rumbles like she’s moving around. “This was just a conversation on _my_ behalf, to Thunder’s wife. We’re allowed to have conversations as individual people, you know.”

The boxer isn’t quite consoled on that point, but she defeatedly asks, “So… what did she say?”

“She was… not entirely helpful.” Lena clears her throat again. “It comes down to more than just the fight. There’s the… _undesirable_ element of your fanbase making all of this more complicated.”

Kara nods, as though Lena could hear her head rattle. “They want me to say something about them, too.”

“Which Lex will never let you do,” adds Lena with a growl. “But I’ve been thinking it over, and maybe we can figure out some very specific language in a press release that’ll soften their view on that.”

“No, no.” The blonde looks at an imaginary spot on the ceiling, the quality of her mood rapidly deteriorating. “That’s okay, Lena. Don’t worry about it. I appreciate the try, anyway. You got farther than anyone else did.”

“We’ll keep at it. This has to find resolve someday.”

Though she’s not nearly so sure, Kara lets the assertion stand. “Thanks, Lena. Really.”

After another tense pause, the heiress replies, “I’ll let you go.”

“When are you… coming back to town?” blurts Kara, unable to stop herself from stalling just a little. Lena’s been MIA up north for weeks, and she can’t say she hasn’t noticed the absence of those bright green eyes around the gym.

“Mmm, not until after Sam’s birthday party. Lex somehow keeps finding urgent projects to keep me here. Don’t be a stranger. Call, text… FaceTime.”

The boxer coughs. “Okay. Talk to you later.”

Kara stares at her phone for a long time afterwards, trying not to let her thoughts drift back to her earlier embarrassment, but then pulls on a pair of basketball shorts and a t-shirt to go downstairs. Her heart rate is just about back to normal when she hits the bottom step and realizes, abruptly, that there’s an olive green duffel bag sitting by the front door. It’s not hers, and it’s not Eliza’s, but it has DANVERS spray-painted in block letters on the side.

The boxer pivots toward the living room to find Alex Danvers, dressed in a black leather jacket and jeans, and her mother sitting on opposite chairs, both looking at her like deer in headlights.

“Hey, Kara. I’m home.”

“You—you, no. No. I’m doing this right now.” And Kara swings her foot down to the ground floor, keeps going, and walk right out the front door as her mother and sister uselessly call her to come back.

After spending a few hours trundling around back roads in her car, wasting what was left of her gas money for the week, Kara manages to coast the hunk of metal into the Coyote parking lot and straight into a space, mostly, and she is four drinks into her afternoon when Alex finds her.

The older Danvers silently slides onto a barstool next to her, orders her drink, and downs half of it before finally saying, “You okay?”

She’s still wearing her leather jacket and jeans, but this time Kara notices other changes, aside from the new scar under her sister’s left ear. Alex’s straight red hair, which she used to wear long, past her shoulders but usually in a ponytail, is now in an undercut, with the swoop of the longer hair on top barely reaching her cheeks. She looks more muscular than when she’d left, and although it’s good that the deep despair that had lived in her eyes before is faded, the woman before her is a very different person than the Alex who had left for parts unknown. Time would tell if that was a good or bad thing.

The casual question makes Kara’s anger rise, but she manages to control the tone of her reply: “No, I’m not _fucking_ okay. Dunno if you heard wherever it is you’ve been, but things are pretty shitty around here, and they have been for a long time.”

“Kara…”

“No, no _don’t touch me.”_ The blonde slaps away the hand that had been reaching for her shoulder. “Where the _fuck_ did you go? You _left_ me here, Alex. Why would you leave me alone like that?”

She doesn’t have the energy to worry about the bartender, Gus, giving her a sympathetic look. Tears are tugging at her eyes, rage blazing in her chest, and she feels like she’s twelve years old again, crying because her older sister went off with her friends and left her behind.

“And then you just—you show up, and I’m supposed to, what? Throw you a parade? Well, hate to break it to you Alex, but I can’t even afford the gas to drive home, so—wel-fucking-come back.”

Alex’s brown eyes flicker over her face, and the older sister swallows thickly. “All of that… is fair.”

“Oh, wonderful… and you won’t even fight with me properly. Add it to the list.”

“After seeing the way you fight? No way, killer.”

Kara sees red, and she almost acts on the tension in her muscles, but Alex catches her arm and squeezes hard, narrowing her eyes.

“Let’s talk, Kara. Please.”

“Fine.” The boxer rips her wrist free, rubbing the tender spot. “Talk.”

With her shoulders drooping, Alex sighs and finishes her scotch, ordering another double before answering, “I was deployed under deep cover. I can’t tell you where. I couldn’t contact you, or Mom, and while that was my intention at the time I left, because I thought that would help me move on from Dad’s death… but I was wrong. And I realize it wasn’t fair of me to be the one that jumped ship. So I put in the time I signed up for, and I came back.”

“How mysterious and somehow still boring,” seethes Kara, her own eyes locked on the bar.

Her sister ignores that. “Point being, I don’t have some grand excuse. I don’t have magic words for it. I was young, and I made a mistake, but I’m here now, Kara, and I… I have been so _worried_ about you. The things they’re saying—the Thunder fight? What happened?”

The contender wants to continue with her self-righteous fury, she truly does—but the moment is too much, and something in her chest seems to snap in two. Eliza has done her very best to support Kara, but… no one has ever understood her, stuck up for her, like Alex. She crumples to the side, and her big sister wraps her arms around her shoulders, resting her head over Kara’s.

“I fucked up, too,” sniffs the boxer as she melts into the embrace. “God, everything’s just so fucked up.”

“I know. I know.” Alex kisses her forehead, and Kara can hear the heaviness of the emotion in her voice as she adds, “But we’re gonna work on fixing it, together now. Okay?”

“Okay.”

_NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA_

“So… what do you think?”

“I dunno… hard to focus on one with everything happening.”

“I was asking Hanh,” teases Grace, giving her wife a playfully exasperated look as they stroll through the “Dog Days” event on Bourbon Street, featuring a block full of rescue organizations peddling educational materials and their four-legged wares on an early spring Saturday. The road is packed with families and pets of all sizes, including one alarmingly giant rabbit in an enclosed baby stroller-type thing.

Anissa shoots the artist an eyeroll, then quickly puts a smile back on when Hanh looks up at her excitedly. “Thoughts?”

“No puppies?” asks the kindergartener for the fifth time, eyes rounded in a perfect, desperate pout. “Really?”

“No puppies,” confirms Anissa, sympathetically.

Hanh sighs, but then drags her mothers towards a seemingly random booth featuring several dogs in black wire crates, all of them wearing bright red “Adopt Me” bandanas. It’s all a bit overwhelming for the recovering boxer, if she’s being honest with herself, with volunteers trying to give elevator pitches, the press of people all around, and the walking itself weighs heavy in her legs. That last is the most frustrating part of the day, and every time someone stops them to talk or ask for a picture, she can feel her knees quaking by the time they start walking again. It makes her feel foolish every time she sees her heavily pregnant wife surreptitiously rubbing her own back, but she knows she shouldn’t waste time comparing. They’re on their struggle bus together, at least.

“What about this one?”

Anissa looks down to find Hanh pointing at something small, fluffy, and shivering. It reminds her of Quang’s chihuahua granddog, Baby—but luckily, she sees an immediate ‘out’ on the small flash card attached to the wire crate. “It says no kids.”

The despairing sigh Hanh lets out is reminiscent of a fifty-year-old woman who’s lived a life of hard labor, but then her eyes light up again, and she darts to the next booth, barely having to duck under one of the long tables covered in rescue pamphlets.

“Hey—what did we say about running off?” calls the boxer, shaking her head as she maneuvers around the booths after the kid. Grace is caught up talking to a dog food rep, and it takes Anissa long enough to locate their daughter that she almost starts to panic, but then she spots Hanh peering intently into a huge kennel.

“He’s smiling at me,” announces the kindergartener, matter-of-factly.

Anissa tilts her head as she takes in the creature gently wagging his tail at her daughter—a big, barrel-chested pitbull with brown fur streaked with black, almost like a tiger, those ears that fold halfway and a graying, squared muzzle. His little flash card says, “Bingo.”

One of the volunteers, probably still in high school, bounces over to introduce herself as the dog’s foster mom. She explains that Bingo had been relinquished by a divorcing couple, with neither wanting to keep him, and Anissa nods along as she watches him delicately sniff at Hanh through the kennel grate.

“Eighty-six pounds of love,” concludes the foster. “And he’s been waiting in shelters and rescues for nine hundred and thirty-seven days.”

The number, each successive one, hits Anissa in the chest. Not because of the timeframe, not necessarily—but because it’s achingly familiar. “What did you say?”

“Nine thirty-seven, almost three years he’s been waiting. It’s not because there’s anything wrong with him, I promise—“

“No, no, it’s not that.” Anissa puts her hands on her hips, unsure what to do except smile down at the dog. Hanh’s plopped herself on the ground, hands folded into her lap (if they had taught her nothing else before coming to the event, it was not to stick her fingers into cages), and Bingo has his head dropped as low as he can, tail still wagging as he looks hopefully up at the kindergartener.

“He’s energetic, but with a daily run, he ends up sleeping on the couch by like eight. I do marathons.”

“I’m a boxer,” replies Anissa distractedly. “So I do a lot of running myself. But, uh—that number, nine thirty-seven? That’s how many days I was in foster care before my mom took me home.”

“Oh,” squeaks the young woman, shuffling her feet uncomfortably.

And the boxer’s feeling such a heady rush of sentimentality that she just breezes by it, asking, “He okay with kids? We got one on the way, too.”

“My understanding is he grew up with small kids. Lucky they didn’t get sent away in the divorce, too.”

“Nah, spend too much money on them upfront for that.” The fighter winks, and the teenager nods nervously. “Can we take him for a little test drive down the street?”

By the time they find Grace, who’d gotten further sidetracked stopping at a concession stand, Hanh’s holding the end of the nylon leash with Bingo walking amiably behind her, the loose rope almost touching the ground between them. He’s as tall as the kindergartener’s shoulder and follows her every move like a doting mother hen, his ears shooting upright with concern every time the kid stumbles on the cobblestone street.

“Whatcha got there?” laughs Grace as Hanh hurries over to her, free hand raising in a silent request for the cup of lemonade in her mother’s hand, which is ignored until she asks for a sip in a huff and with a “please.” The whole time, Bingo just stands next to her, wagging his tail and smiling up at Grace.

“It’s Bingo,” answers Hanh, succinctly, like Grace should _obviously_ already know that, before she returns her attention to said dog, explaining what lemonade is to him and why he can’t have any of it.

Grinning, Anissa shrugs and wraps an arm around her wife’s hip, pulling her closer… and quietly stealing a long draw of lemonade from the straw, until Grace laughs and moves the cup away. “I had to wait a whole five minutes in line for this sweet manna, you asshole.”

“Shh, language,” admonishes the fighter, putting one hand on either side of Grace’s belly like earmuffs, until her wrists get swatted away.

“I thought we said _a dog,_ not a horse,” whispers the artist as they follow behind Hanh and Bingo. The kindergartener continues chattering away to the big dog, telling a story about what happened at lunch that week, and Anissa hasn’t felt so… _normal_ since the Supergirl fight. She’s out with her family, enjoying a Saturday morning in the French Quarter.

It takes only a few seconds for her to decide that that vision includes their new friend, too. Hanh had been through a lot over the last few months, more than Anissa would have ever wanted to put on her children, but handled it more or less like a champ. Still, it’s been a long time since the boxer has seen Hanh look so deliriously excited about something other than a new Netflix offering, and the brightness in her tiny voice has Anissa’s heart simultaneously brimming with warmth and clenching with guilt. “Yeah, but look at him. He’s perfect—being gentle with Hanh, likes going for runs. When I’m out of town, I’d feel a lot better knowing that guy is home with you, with everything that’s been happening.”

Grace hums in agreement, resting her head on Anissa’s shoulder as they steer their daughter back to the booth to fill out an application. “You do know Khalil is usually home with us, too, right?”

The boxer scoffs, “Jen’d be more useful to you in a fight than that kid. I tried to teach him to throw a punch; trust me on this. We need a dog.”

Bingo drops his hips into a sit as they wait in line, glancing over his shoulder at Anissa as if seeking approval. She rubs behind his ears, and then Grace joins in, getting a few timid licks on her wrist, and if they hadn’t already made the decision to add yet another treasured heartbeat to their family, Bingo seems to have made it for them.

_ORLANDO, FLORIDA_

An invite to the next ESPYs had been a question mark at best for Kara “Supergirl” Danvers, controversial figure that she was these days—but Lena had batted away concerns easily enough, lobbing a thinly veiled threat of accusing the producers of discrimination by banning Kara, but allowing the likes of Ben Roethlisberger and Michael Vick to attend. They quickly decided to extend her an invitation. She wasn’t going to be presenting any awards, though, and that was fine with her.

So besides getting gussied up for the press photos on the red carpet, her mission was simple: Get as many selfies with “market adjacent” stars as she could. Lex had given her a Wish List, of course, but the more, the merrier… which all would have been fine, except Lex also sent her with Mike Gand, in his words, “to relate to the male celebrities,” as if the fact that she was a professional athlete wasn’t going to be enough. Maybe it wasn’t, given the list’s impressively problematic names: Ray Rice, Mike Ditka, Tom Brady… it went on, with varying degrees of behavior that Kara, personally, would find enough to avoid such people.

And under that context, Kara finds herself milling about the exclusive backstage pre-party with Mike already beginning to slur his words, the James Franco to her Anne Hathaway for the evening of awards, as Kara carefully hunts down NASCAR drivers and MLB players for her selfie collection. More than one took the opportunity to unsubtly palm her ass through her simple blue dress, and Kara mentally noted such offenders to strike back if she ever ran into them on the street.

The scenes around the room otherwise match up to what she once thought she would only ever see on TV; table after table of free, wildly expensive stuff that guests were invited to pack away in the provided guest bags—iPad Pros, Raybans, FitBits, colognes, perfume, face treatments, teeth whitening kits, it went on, and Kara didn’t miss a single one. This was just a _taste_ of the material world that could be hers after some world title wins, and it was a nice reminder: She didn’t plan on being in this place, squirreling away free samples like a starving delinquent, forever.

But, her stomach does clench and twist a little at the fellow athletes she sees slinking away from her or avoiding her eyes. Certainly, a large contingent probably have no idea who she is, and that’s fair, but something about the way a select few look at her feels quite… pointed. Mike’s constant drunken rambling next to her probably didn’t help.

She doesn’t feel truly out of place, though, until she spots an unexpected guest, and her stomach now hits the floor:

Anissa Pierce, taking laughing selfies with members of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team, chumming around like the belle of the ball. Thunder looks like a million bucks in an open gray blazer with white button-down underneath—well, _unbuttoned_ down to the last three buttons, showing off the still-impressive muscles of her chest and stomach, with pinstripe flat-front shorts and black chukka boots, her twists delicately wrapped so that they cascade over one side of her head. She looks rakish, confident, and healthy, and Kara _isn’t ready for this._

Even though the ostracization is her own doing, the cold chasm that opens in her chest is painfully familiar. The Danvers family had never done a single thing to make her feel like anything less than one of them, through and through… but the rest of the world was not so committed. Bullies reminded her of her “otherness” daily, and she learned more or less to be happy on her own, when she wasn’t with family. Case in point, she spent more time with Lar Gand than her own mother, but wouldn’t venture as far to call him a “friend”. He was her trainer, and that was the nature of their relationship.

Thoughts spiraling, Kara pivots on her heel in the opposite direction when the champ begins to turn her way.

That ends up being a mistake, because she bumps right into _Jennifer_ Pierce, Anissa’s younger sister, and only just barely avoids spilling her drink on the younger woman.

“I’m sorry—“

_“You,”_ hisses Jen, eyes instantly narrowing. “Are you _kidding me?”_

“I don’t want any trouble,” Kara insists, a bit desperately. She really, _really_ does not want this night to deteriorate further, least of all because the only person she knows in town is Mike. “Let me just get out of your way.”

And if she’d successfully left the area, maybe even retreating all the way to their seats for the show, it probably would have been a nice night, on balance. She would’ve lost Mike after the show and explored Orlando, and they were supposed to go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter the next day, something Kara had looked forward to for so long that not even he could ruin it for her. That would’ve been pleasant.

Except, the universe did not seem to want that for her tonight. A wall of people suddenly blocked her way, and somehow Mike ends up between Kara and Jen as he tried to follow the boxer… then the younger Pierce gets in a last word:

“Yeah, that’s right, walk away. You _and_ your Nazi boyfriend.”

That latter part is the night’s undoing, because as Kara turns back, Mike is already moving towards the young woman, hands balled tightly at his sides. “The fuck did you just call me?”

“Mike, Mike!” Kara tries to grab for him over someone’s shoulder, but she just ends up bumping into a waiter, who drops two metal plates, and the ear-splittingly loud clattering attracts the attention of everyone around them—including Thunder herself. Anissa’s already coming towards them when Kara looks up, and she’s being trailed by an alarming number of angry-looking professional athletes. Their eyes meet, briefly, and Kara swears she sees lightning flash across the other boxer’s cheeks.

“Hey, what the fuck?” demands the champ, reaching between Jen and Mike with an open palm, making a point, but not touching him. “You need to back up from my sister, my dude.”

“She called me a Nazi,” huffs Mike. He’s glaring over Thunder’s shoulder at Jen as Kara finally makes it to them as well, gripping the man’s jacket in a tight fist after he shrugs off her attempts to grab his arm. “That’s not okay.”

“If it goosesteps like one…” offers one of the soccer players with an unimpressed expression, arms crossed.

Anissa shakes her head, saying something about everyone staying calm, but keeps her eyes on Mike. Her little sister’s smirking up at him from just under the protective shield of Thunder’s arm, and despite the rising chaos of the moment, or perhaps because of it, Kara’s struck with the familiarity of the silhouette. It’s a position her own big sister had taken up dozens of times on the schoolyard, even if Kara is the one who ended up becoming a professional fighter. _Fuck with my sister, and you fuck with me._

“Mike, come on,” she hisses, tugging the fabric in her hand. There’s a crowd gathered around them now, and she sees plenty of cell phones out recording the interaction. Part of her suspects she wasn’t told about Anissa Pierce attending the ESPYs on purpose. “We don’t want any trouble, seriously. Let’s just go.”

“No, she can’t talk to me like that—she should apologize,” Mike is insisting, solid and unyielding as a statue.

_“She_ doesn’t have to do an-y-thing,” growls Jen with a roll of her eyes, and if it had just been that, the junior Gand might’ve backed down. Except the people around them are jeering, too, meaning he’s _embarrassed,_ the worst thing Mike can be, and Kara knows what this looks like but has no idea how to stop it; a grown man trying to shout down a teenager and a woman who nearly died a few months ago. It’s not great. It’s about to get very out of control.

“Mike, you need to stop,” she says, repeating it as his shoulders tense.

“Stay out of this, Kara. I’m waiting for my apology.”

* * *

The ESPYs were supposed to be her first big night out since the Supergirl fight. She’d been cleared to drive and fly by the doctors, and while she would’ve preferred to have Grace along for the event, having her sister with her was fun, too. Her wife ultimately decided she had no interest in going to theme parks or an all-night awards show while squarely into her third trimester, and given the way the night was unfolding, Anissa was rather grateful for that small detail. While she would of course snap Mike Gand’s neck to protect her sister… she’d also probably react with the same force if he so much as _breathed_ wrong at her pregnant wife.

Nobody from the network had told them that Kara Danvers would be in Orlando, and Anissa has an inkling that that was not an accident as soon as she sees her sister exchanging harsh words with the son of Lar Gand and, apparently, Kara’s date for the evening. Seeing the blonde woman again, in person, for the first time since their fight has adrenaline shooting through Anissa’s veins, muscles tensing across her body as her heart rate kicks into overdrive. Her brain flashes unhelpful images of Kara Danvers’ glove hurtling towards her face, desperately reminding her of the months of pain that this threat inflicted on her once before—

_Stress response to a trauma trigger,_ Perenna’s maddeningly calm voice whispers in her ear, and the boxer dutifully focuses on her breaths as she starts moving towards the commotion, forcing herself to reframe what’s about to happen: This just became her first big post-fight _mental_ challenge. She’s ready for it.

Supergirl’s wearing a fairly unassuming blue dress, her impressive shoulders on full display under thin straps, but she struggles to move across the crowd in heels, and by the time Kara reaches the conflict, the whole room is in on the game… and who better to make a tense situation worse than a space full of pro athletes buzzing on wine and egos?

When Mike declares that he’s not leaving it be, Anissa has to put her foot down—literally shoving herself completely between her sister and the scruffy man, careful not to so much as brush against him. Someone behind them turns _the fucking flash_ on their phone on to record her answer, but she presses on anyway, “Mr. Gand, my sister and I are going to walk away from you right now, but you will not get an apology from us tonight. Your people have been calling mine about me sitting down with your girl to talk about the fight, and maybe it’s time. But on this, you walk away, right now.”

“Oh, okay, now that everyone’s watching, you’re very magnanimous.” Mike crosses his arms. “But let me tell you this, I’m tired of you people calling everyone you disagree with a Nazi.”

Anissa blinks hard at the dog whistle, suddenly cycling through a gauntlet of emotions. Exhaustion. Anger. Disbelief. Her first night out, of-fucking-course. Mike Gand might put on a good show for pseudo-intellectual YouTube dudes to cheer later, provided he could be understood through his beer-heavy Midwestern accent, but he was a _small_ man, through and through. Anissa could see it. Jen, Grace—maybe even Kara, judging by the horrified look on Supergirl’s face. He’s a piteous thing.

The point being: Anissa is plenty experienced in dealing with small men.

As the room grows silent, any type of security presence conspicuously absent, the boxer tilts her head, giving Mike a slow up-and-down, smirks, and puts her arm around Jen to walk away, mostly to move her sister out of harm’s way if the red-faced man Tries Something. She isn’t wrong to worry.

Mike surges forward, surprisingly quick, and grabs her arm in a bruising grip to lean close. She’s vaguely aware that the motion sets off a wave of reaction around them, but it happens too quickly for everything to register, except that Mike pitches his voice lower, enough so that only those right next to them _might_ hear… and Anissa catches every single hateful syllable:

“Laugh all you want, you stupid bitch. End of the day, you’re nothing but a bottom barrel waste of a cunt, a bastard dyke ni—“

Anissa’s hand clenches in preparation for him to finish that last word, the muscles in her shoulder readying to lash out in her weight class’s fastest jab, but somebody beats her to the punch—literally. She hears the solid impact of a fist to a face, sees blood pour from Mike Gand’s nose as he stumbles back, and then she sees the attacker: Kara Danvers, shoulders set, chest rising and falling rapidly, blue eyes practically glowing with anger.

“How _dare_ you,” she’s seething at her date as he holds his nose with one hand.

“Fucking _Christ,_ Kara, I think you broke it!” Mike groans, and when a PA puts a hand on his shoulder to start leading him away, he shoves him away, and the backstage erupts again in a flurry of movement.

Security guards are instantly swarming into the space, but they’re slowed by guests and presenters beelining for exits as Mike scuffles with two NFL players.

“Danvers!” calls Anissa when she spots the blonde making her way towards Mike, wearing an expression the champ knows _very_ well: inevitably heralding a poor decision. Huffing, she dives through scattering people and takes hold of Supergirl’s arm, thankful the other boxer doesn’t reflexively elbow her. “They’ve got it, you’re good. Stop, stop—breathe, Danvers.”

Kara’s still panting hard, but she nods, and is just about to say something when Mike breaks free of security and tries to flee. Anissa doesn’t see what stops the man in his tracks until another fist collides with his face.

“That’s for being rude to my sister,” barks Jen, and then she swings again, landing an impressive hook to his middle. “That’s for ruining tonight.” And the final blow is a knee squarely between his legs, dropping Mike to the floor in a groaning, gasping ball. “And that’s for being a racist piece of shit.”

Security guards take it from there, and Anissa looks at Danvers, then shrugs. “I taught her all that, so. Kinda like _I_ got him.”

At that, Kara barks a high-pitched, near-whimpery laugh, and Anissa’s triumphant mood softens with empathy at the devastated look on the blonde’s handsome face. _This new baby shit is making me a sucker._ “Hey Danvers—stick around, after this? We… We can talk.”

Supergirl’s eyebrows shoot towards her hairline, but she answers in the form of a sharp nod before they’re escorted to separate parts of the room by security.

When they talk to the police about the night’s turn of events (and the show itself goes on, likely with a bump in viewership from social media posts about the brawl), Kara tells it like it is, even leaning her story towards taking responsibility. Most everyone else pins it accurately on Mike assaulting Anissa, and there’s applause when he’s hauled away in the back of a patrol car—the only circumstance in which Anissa or Jen would cheer on such a thing.

By the time they are firmly, but politely led out the back doors, Anissa’s bone-tired and starving, but she brushes off Jen’s insistence that she go back to the hotel with her.

“Jen… I need to talk to her.” Anissa raises her eyebrows in the direction of Kara Danvers, who’s looking both downtrodden and nervous a few feet away.

“One Nazi punch does not absolve her of—“

“I know. That’s why we gotta talk, woman to woman, without anyone putting on a show. I’ll call you, okay?”

_“Text_ me, freak,” sighs Jen before hopping into her Uber Black.

Anissa makes sure the SUV makes it out of the parking lot without press harassment, then turns to her as-of-yet arch nemesis: Kara “Supergirl” Danvers, who looks like a kicked puppy.

“Might be a little short on you, but I have a couple extra pairs of sweats in my car.”

The blonde sighs, but nods and follows Anissa out into the lot.

After some small talk and gentle cajoling, Anissa gets Kara to open up enough to decide where they should eat—Shake Shack. The four burgers and two chocolate shakes seem to put the contender at ease, as does the hoodie and sweatpants that ride up to her mid-shins. Even though their makeup is completely out of place compared to their clothes, no one seems to notice the fighters on a late Saturday night, and Anissa has never been more grateful for some time to breathe.

Talking about the brawl, commiserating on Mike’s incredible crassness, gets them through the meal, but Anissa doesn’t exactly want to go back to either of their hotel rooms to talk. They’d barely make it out of her SUV before the press and their teams would find them. Instead, she drives around until they find a park that’s still open, but more or less empty, and they sit on the hood of her car to sip the room temperature beers Anissa had in the trunk. Better than nothing.

Despite the generally harmless conversation so far, she knows something’s coming when Kara lets out a long, momentous sigh, putting down her drink and curling her legs. “Pierce, I… I guess the whole point of all this mess is for me to apologize. I am… so, so sorry.”

“Kara. You almost killed me—with a _dirty_ shot.”

“I know, and I… I think about that, every day. It haunts me.” Kara lets out a long, shuddering breath. “I wish there was a way to tell you how sorry I am, but… I dunno, I could go on for years and not get it across.”

Anissa believes her, immediately. It’s not difficult, with those sincere blue eyes shining back at her. But she still needs to say what she needs to say, especially because Kara seems to know it must happen, too. _“How_ did you not see me down, Danvers? How am I supposed to believe that killing me wasn’t your intent? My wife, my family—they almost watched me die that night.”

“I blacked out,” stammers Kara. “I was just, totally beast mode. Look, it’s not an excuse, but my sponsor told me it was win, or he’d stop paying, which meant my family loses their farm, and I’m out of a job. I was desperate. Am desperate.”

The older boxer pauses, letting her breathing even out again, feeling the corresponding calming of her temper. “Lose wha—your farm? What does boxing have to do with that?”

“Lex owns my career _and_ the mortgage,” sighs the blonde, putting her head in her hands. “My dad died a few years ago, and that made things worse, but we’ve been drowning for way longer than that. Winning goodwill and fights for L-Corp has been the only thing stopping foreclosure. So when Lex said I had to win or lose everything… I lost my head.”

“All over mine,” agrees Anissa, not caring that it’s a little meaner than necessary to continue poking at her in this moment.

“And I’ll say I’m sorry a million times if that helps.”

“Nah. No need.”

Sniffling, Kara lifts her head, blue eyes reddened with tears. “What can I do?”

“To absolve your own guilt? That’s not on me,” replies the champ, not unkindly. “But let me think about what you can do to show _me_ that you really are sorry about that first fight. TBD.”

“Okay,” agrees the blonde with another sniffle. She does look piteous, miserable and alone, and Anissa can’t help but put a hand on her shoulder to give a coach-like squeeze. “I’m just so tired of all this. All I want to do is box, and all L-Corp’s marketing team wants me to do is grab headlines.”

Anissa certainly understands that first part, maybe not the second. Her ragtag Team Thunder came together really without anyone ever noticing it, except maybe for the weeks she’d spent begging Cecile West to take the (mostly) part-time spot as Thunder’s legal representation. She paid people’s salaries with her sponsorships and winnings, sure, but most of the team members were well-established in the sport anyway, and they’d never run into a disagreement over pay.

“How does your team work?” she asks as casually as she can.

“Hm?”

“Your team,” repeats Anissa, letting go of the taller woman’s shoulder to lean back against the windshield. “Lar’s your trainer, Lex is your manager, who else? What the fuck does Mike even do?”

That makes Supergirl chuckle, dryly, and she joins Anissa on her back, both of them looking up through sparse tree branches at a dark sky and shining half moon. “Mike’s… I think technically, he’s on Lar’s payroll, as his assistant. There are a couple other trainers who cycle in on contracts, help me with pads and sparring and whatnot, but mostly it’s just Lar and Lex running the show. They each have some kind of background team, more assistants, attorneys, marketing people, consultants. The payroll for everyone is put through L-Corps’ HR. They tell me where to go, whose product to endorse on Instagram. What about you?”

“Definitely not all that,” laughs Anissa. “Gambi takes a small cut, and my medic, my main sparring partner, Padman. We throw a few bucks to fighters who come help me practice. I have an attorney and a marketing intern, but usually that’s just my sister. No free handouts on Team Thunder.”

Kara doesn’t address that last part, but clears her throat. “So when Nike called you up, they just… dialed your cell phone? ‘Hey Pierce, it’s Nike calling?’”

“Gambi’s phone, but yeah.” The older boxer turns to look at her once-and-maybe-again opponent, who at least isn’t in tears anymore, but has a dark cloud over her usually bright features. “Kara, our world champs are never gonna make money like Mayweather, and I have zero frame of reference for what a payment on a farm is, but… something about your situation doesn’t feel right. Haven’t you gotten any other management offers?”

Kara pauses, looking back at her with narrowed blue eyes. “Well… no? Should I?”

“Yeah—pretty young thing like you: blonde hair, blue eyes, beloved by Middle America? I see why a place like L-Corp would want to keep you on their books, but so would a lot of other management companies.”

“We have a contract, I guess.”

“For how long?”

“Ten years.”

Anissa nearly chokes on her beer at the number, and she sits up again in alarm. “That’s an entire _career,_ Kara, Jesus. What are the terms?”

“Well, I… I can’t say.”

“NDA?”

Supergirl nods, forlorn, and Anissa comes very close to feeling sorry for the tall woman. Maybe she gets all the way there, but she won’t admit it for now. She’s no legal scholar, so it’s not like she’d be that much help anyway, but an injustice against a young, promising athlete, even one that threatened to derail her own career, was an injustice no matter who it targeted. And she was Anissa _Pierce._ This was her moment to prove that that name still meant something to her.

Perhaps Cecile could help her with exploring that topic later, and she senses Kara is getting nervous again, so she changes tact, hopping off the hood to dig around in her backseat for a bottle of wine from her pre-show gift bag, mercifully a twist-top version. She cracks it open and takes a long draw, then hands it to an initially hesitant Kara as she says, “That means bringing out the good stuff. And to not violate your gag rule, can I ask you a personal question instead?”

Danvers shoots her a sideways glance, but shrugs and swigs the wine. “I guess if we’ve been in a brawl and almost arrested together, we’re default friends now.”

_Friends. I guess._ Anissa chuckles, nodding as she accepts the bottle back. She takes a moment to decide how she wants to phrase her curiosity, hoping not to scare Kara into silence, and ultimately decides Supergirl seems like she needs _someone_ to speak to her straight… so to speak. “Girl, _what_ is going on with you and Miss Lena Luthor?”

The younger boxer nearly falls off the other side of the hood, as if the question physically hit her, and chokes out a laugh before answering, “Plead the fifth, Pierce.”

“That’s not nothing.” Anissa flashes her a smirk, handing the bottle back now that she’s sure Kara won’t drop it. “Come on, Danvers, don’t pussy out on me. Speak your truth, I’m not trying to trip you up.”

Eyes sweeping the sky, Kara’s still hesitating, though her jaw is working through her silence.

“Look, I’ve been there, and I only ask because I know how it feels. But I was lucky enough to grow up in a place where people like me were everywhere. Old news.”

“‘People like you?’” Kara frowns.

And Anissa gives her a pointed eyeroll. “Lesbians, Kara. Bisexuals, Nubians. Pansexual, heteroflexible. Damn, Danvers, don’t play dumb.”

“Heteroflexible,” repeats the blonde with a soft laugh, tapering off to a sigh. Something seems to shift in her expression, and she has to clear her throat a few times before she can respond. _“Why_ do you ask about me and Lena, let’s start with that?”

It’s like pulling teeth. Anissa reminds herself to be patient; she just wants to help, but this is also none of her business, at the end of the day. “Because… my spidey senses are tingling whenever I see you two together. There’s looks, and smiles, and… neither of you are like that individually. You’re like a cardboard cutout of yourself most of the time.”

“Wo-ow… such a good friend Pierce.”

The champ just pins her with another Look, and whether it’s due to her explicit disbelief or Kara’s own need to lighten her burdens, the younger boxer finally relents.

“It’s nothing, technically speaking. Lena and I went to high school together, then she went away to college, and I stayed in town. When she came back, she was… I don’t know, the dynamic between us changed. I don’t know what it is.”

“Talk it out. Are you… attracted to her?” asks the older boxer, quieter and with more compassion. She doesn’t mean the question in a salacious way, truly.

Kara groans, lifting a hand to self-consciously touch her glasses, but her hand swings uselessly past her temple since they were lost in the ESPYs fight. “Maybe?”

“That’s not a ‘no’, either.”

“Correct.”

“I mean, I’m a married lady, and I’ve never dated a white girl, but—” Anissa whistles appreciatively. “—Lena Luthor? That is one _gorgeous_ woman.” She watches, smug, as Kara’s whole body constricts, eyes flashing with a familiar look, all of it confirming her suspicions, and she quickly jabs at the vulnerable, jealous contender with, “Oh, so you like- _like_ her, huh?”

Realizing she’s being messed with, Kara lets out a long, wheezing breath, and then laughs as her cheeks redden. “Christ, okay—okay. Yes, I’m attracted to Lena, I mean, how could you not be, right?”

“Nah, that’s not what you mean, and you know it.”

“Fine.” Kara waves a hand at her dismissively, even as she agrees. “I like her… a lot. She’s brilliant, and she’s kind, and she’s loyal. She’s funny. I was really surprised she came back to Kansas after school, but she has it in her head that she can take over her family’s company one day, maybe start undoing the bad that they’ve done. She tries her best, but Lex and their mother have all the power. I know if I were her, I’d be using _my_ trust fund to bum around the world or something, not hang around a place like Smallville.”

A slow smile creeps across Anissa’s face as she dutifully listens to just how bad Kara Danvers has it for Lena Luthor. She can practically see little pink hearts floating from the blonde’s eyes and ears as she speaks in a hushed, punchdrunk tone, and Anissa doubts very much that Lena has no idea of the affect she has on Kara—so what’s the _problem?_ “Have you ever… asked her out? Even casual-like?”

“Pffft, no. Even if I could, I would probably throw up on her shoes. And her shoes cost more than I make in a month.”

Every part of that response is a new slap in the face, and it takes Anissa longer than it might usually to decide what to say to that. She starts with the first part. “What do you mean, ‘if you could’? You’re both consenting adults.”

“Ah,” gulps Kara, eyes narrowing again. “Well, besides the fact that Lex would consider it an embarrassment to his family, it falls within the realm of stuff that would ruin my… image.”

“Your _image?”_

“Lar and Lex have a morality clause in my contract, to protect the brand. I’m _contractually_ an obligate heterosexual.”

Now, it’s Anissa’s turn to nearly fall off the vehicle. She pokes the blonde on the shoulder with one finger until their eyes meet, and then says firmly, “Kara, that is _seriously_ fucked up. This is not 2003, you can’t let them do that to you.”

_“Let_ them? Anissa, I didn’t have any other choice, not if I wanted to fight full time. Besides the contract, they pay for my food, my clothes, my housing—”

“And your obedience,” finishes the older boxer, and she _feels_ the way Kara bristles at the words. “I get it, I do. You were in a bad spot. But Kara, this isn’t just some clause saying you have to wear such and such size logo on your shorts. This is your _life.”_

“So what do I do? Let them ruin my family’s life so I can ask Lena on a date that will probably go nowhere?”

Ah. Anissa sighs, rolling back her righteous personal anger and gathering her thoughts and perspective. She’s been living her life out and proud for more than fifteen years, having come out to Lynn at the end of middle school. Going back in the closet had never even been a question, and truthfully the LGBTQ+ community had been more than supportive of her, with so many messages saying stuff like _I didn’t even watch boxing before,_ but Kara’s MAGA-loving crowd… Her manager and trainer had conspired to create a situation where she couldn’t come out, whether that had been at front of mind when they wrote the contract or not.

In the end, she puts a hand on Kara’s arm, pitching her voice lower to say, “Gambi and my team have always handled that stuff for me. Do you want… maybe they could look it over for you?”

“But my NDA…”

“Listen, Kara. Really listen to me right now.” Anissa waits until she’s satisfied that’s the case, and then continues, “What’s passed between us is past. You and I are two big names in a small sport that gets ignored and forgotten, and we’re in this together. I won’t judge you either way, because we are all out here just trying to survive, but… I _will_ help you. Just let me know, okay?”

To her surprise, Danvers starts trembling a little, her eyes rimmed with tears. “I, uh… I never apologized for… besides the hit…”

Tilting her head, Anissa lets Kara sit with the thoughts, even though she’s got a pretty good idea of where the blonde is going.

“I guess there’s no other way to say it, all the racist shit.”

Her genuinely exasperated tone makes Anissa laugh, and she bumps the other boxer with her shoulder. “Thank you, for saying that. Oppression and fascism aren’t part of your contract, are they?”

And now Kara chuckles, wheezy and nervous. “No. And I could do better to stand up to all that. I know.”

“It’s a start.” She’s starting to like contender Kara Danvers, but Anissa’s not done yet. Casually, she presses, “But be real with me—is the contract the _only_ reason you’ve never made a move on Ms. Lena Luthor?”

“God,” sighs the blonde, flushing bright red as she rubs her temple. After a few seconds of incomprehensible sputtering, she finally gets out, “I don’t even know if she… likes… women. Or if I do, really. I don’t think I’m gay?”

“Just because you bake a cake, doesn’t make you a baker,” teases Anissa, not quite in the right headspace to explain the buffet of identities for Kara to consider instead of just “gay”. The Internet is a thing that exists, after all. “The most important question is, does she like _you?_ And as an objective observer, I say the answer to that is a _resounding_ yes.”

“What am I supposed to _do,_ though? ‘Hey Lena, your family basically owns me, but I’d like to take you out for a fun night on the town, maybe kiss your neck a little bit?’”

_“Damn_ , Danvers. You are smitten,” laughs Anissa, but she pats the blonde’s shoulder in sympathy. “Look, I think maybe our game runs a little different, but if I were in your shoes, I’d shoot my shot. She’s not like some secret homophobe, right?”

“Lena? No way.”

“Then ask her out, Danvers. You get punched in the face for a living, this is nothing.” The older fighter slides off the hood of her SUV, accepting the bottle of wine for a final time. “When’s the next time you’re gonna see Ms. Lena Luthor?”

“Uh, friend’s party. Sam. Next month. Lena’s been in Chicago off and on a lot lately, we’re all meeting up in KC.”

“Okay, there it is, then. That’s perfect—public setting, everyone hanging out. You should try.”

Kara finishes the wine and shakes the bottle upside-down over the concrete before tossing it in a nearby Parks & Rec recycling bin. “What am I supposed to even say?”

Sighing, Anissa moves around the front of the vehicle, trying not to smirk when Kara shrinks a little before realizing that she’s coming over to illustrate. It’s a bit strange, considering she feels zero vibes of that nature with Kara Danvers, but she manages to put on a decently suave voice as she says, “Listen, Lena, maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree, and if I am, we can just go back to our party—but would you want to get a drink with me some time?”

Bright red spreads across Kara’s cheeks and down her neck, and Anissa knows she got her point across.

To break the tension, the champ leans away again, making sure to move around the car before she adds: “And after that, you’re on your own, but make sure you suck her clit, don’t just lick it, okay?”

Kara makes a choked sort of noise, like someone just shoved a fist into her stomach, and Anissa’s mildly surprised she doesn’t pass out before sliding into the passenger seat.

_NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA_

It’s silent in the Washington-Choi house when Anissa arrives just after midnight. She leaves her heavy suitcase in the foyer, kicks off her shoes, tosses her jacket on the bannister, and pads up the stairs in her socks. Jen’s doorway is dark, so she’s either asleep or not home. The fighter stops two down from the master bedroom to look in on Hanh: out cold, wrapped in her Lion King blanket with a Berenstain Bears book squished under her shoulder. Next, she passes the closed door to the finished nursery, just waiting for their new family member to complete the picture, and quietly pushes open the door at the end of the hall.

After a few seconds, Anissa’s eyes adjust to the dark room, but before she can see anything, she hears a rapid thumping from the bed. Unsurprisingly, Bingo is in the covers with Grace, his square head resting protectively on the curve of her belly. He isn’t allowed to sleep in the bed unless Anissa isn’t there, like a replacement pillow, and the boxer almost can’t bring herself to make him move—almost. She’s been away from home for the longest time since the Supergirl fight, so she does give him a firm, quiet _off_ , and the canine stretches for longer than seems strictly necessary, hops off the mattress, and flops onto his bolstered, orthopedic dog bed.

“I know, my man, I’m sorry,” she murmurs, giving him a scratch behind the ears before turning back to her wife’s sleeping form—or not sleeping, as she discovers dark eyes blinking slowly back at her in the dim light. “Hi, baby. Sorry to wake you.”

“Welcome home,” is Grace’s sleepy reply, and she pushes up to rest her head on one palm despite Anissa’s half-hearted protests. “No-no, I’m awake. Come here, you.”

Smiling at the whine in her wife’s voice, the boxer dutifully climbs into the bed and scoots as close as she can, which is no easy feat with Grace’s seventh-month belly between them.

“I missed you, ya big warrior,” continues the artist as her eyes slip partially closed again. “Did Jen really beat up that guy?”

“Oh, yeah. Nearly broke her hand. And I missed you, too. Everybody okay here?”

“Mmm. Hanh got in trouble at school today, for drawing on the desk.”

“Fair. She knows she shouldn’t do that.”

“I know, but not to worry—a criminal career is not in her stars. She tried to snitch and tell the teacher that other kids were writing on their desk… but she’s the only one who wrote her own name.”

That makes Anissa laugh, loud and surprised, and she shakes her head as she nuzzles into her wife’s warm neck. “She’s gonna be one of those kids who thinks we can’t smell weed in her bedroom.”

“Oh, God… she’s gonna be a teenager one day. Now I _can’t_ go back to sleep. Also… have to pee. Give me some muscle, you lummox.”

Anissa keeps smiling as she helps push her wife upright. “G’s gotta pee. What else is new?”

“Hey,” Grace jabs a finger in her direction as she steadies herself on her feet. “That’s enough lip from you. I’m cooking this baby for the _both_ of us, and they’ve been sitting on my bladder for weeks.”

The fighter holds up her hands in surrender, settling against the pillows as Grace disappears into the bathroom. She sits right back up, however, heart leaping into her throat, when Bingo’s head jerks, collar tags jingling, and the bedroom door creaks open. The dog’s tail immediately starts wagging, though, because it’s just Hanh, his favorite person in the world, sleepily rubbing her eyes as she drags her blanket into the room behind her.

“Hey, babygirl,” greets the boxer, meeting Hanh halfway and pulling the kid into a hug. She hadn’t realized how much she missed her daughter until she’s nearly in tears at the smell of her tear-free shampoo and bubblegum toothpaste.

“You didn’t say hi to me,” whines the kindergartener in a tone that suggests she’s not fully awake, followed by some piteous whimpers.

“Yeah, ‘cause you were sleepin’.” Anissa carries her back to the bed, wrapping the blanket around her as she goes, and gives Grace an innocent look when she steps back out from the bathroom. They’ve been trying to minimize their daughter’s nights in their bed in preparation for many, many sleepless nights with their new baby, but… she’s been out of town. She’s calling an audible on this one.

After Grace eases back into her side of the bed, Hanh huffs in sleepy frustration until she finds a comfortable position between them, which of course involves a hand splayed over Anissa’s face and a leg slung across Grace’s. The boxer closes her eyes as she throws her own arm over their daughter, resting her palm on the warm, taut skin of her wife’s stomach. There’s an answering _bump_ from their slumbering child within a minute or two, and a couple tears do slip down her cheeks as she acknowledges the relief flooding her veins. She’s home. Everyone is safe. She drifts to sleep with her whole world, everything that matters, slumbering away in her arms.

She’s ready to get back to her life with them. Good thing Thunder and Supergirl had started forming a plan to help them _both_ get back to their lives. Their best lives.

_KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI_

“To Kara!”

“To Kara!” echoes the table, and said Danvers sinks down in her chair, hands over her face.

“Guys, it’s Sam’s birthday,” protests the boxer, weakly. “Tonight’s not about me.”

“You are on TV, like, as we speak.” Sam points to one of the nearby flatscreens in the Royals-themed sports bar she elected to begin their celebratory night.

It had taken a few weeks, but they’d decided on terms for their rematch, both between their respective teams and secret, side discussions between the boxers themselves. There was an exit clause for Anissa if anything went wrong with Grace or their new baby, but in the case of a healthy birth, the match would be held one hundred and fifty days after Grace’s due date, in Kansas City this time. Lex had been suspicious of the easygoing negotiations, but impressed, and for once mostly went along with the proposals of his fighter. Lar also seemed pleased, convinced that this was going to be the match where Kara put Anissa away for good. That could still happen to her champion status, but Supergirl had no intention to allow a fight to go that far ever again—and Thunder would have Gambi back in her corner, for added assurances.

It would be a tight timeline for Anissa’s recovery, but what both fighters agreed on was the need for closure. The rematch was the only thing that could make that happen, and Pierce swore up and down that she could be ready in time, so they’d scheduled a joint press conference in KC to announce the bout, managing to get through the whole thing without anyone fighting. Possibly because Mike was out on probation from his showing at the ESPYs.

“So, what, did you win over Thunder by punching Mike in the face?” asks Sam, loudly, to be heard over the din of the busy bar.

“That at least got her to listen to me.”

“Hey, anyone who shuts up Mike Gand is _automatically_ more attractive, right, Lena?”

Kara doesn’t miss the wink Sam sends the Luthor from across the table, but she doesn’t dare look. It’s bad enough that Lena’s sitting next to her, looking _like that_ in a scoopneck black dress while the boxer is still trying to remember the lines Anissa suggested and feeling foolish for idly wishing she had made flash cards or something to help her through it. Worse, their arms and knees keep brushing together as the meal progresses, sending little sparks of fire along her skin every time. Kara doesn’t know everyone in Sam’s small friend group, but Alex got the okay to come along with her as a plus one, and that helps—but would be more helpful if her sister hadn’t spent most of the night so far talking to Sam.

“No, seriously Kara, where did you guys go that night?” prods the unhelpful Luthor, flashing a grin that makes the fighter’s ears heat. “It’s becoming something of an urban legend. Some say you had a secret fight, like Peter Gambi and Jefferson Pierce.”

“What’s the point of a secret fight if you tell people about it?” interrupts Alex. “Isn’t it more fun that way? The mystery?”

“Only when you’re a plebian, on the outside.” Sam wrinkles her nose in a grin and winks at the elder Danvers, and this is all a _bit_ much for Kara after three beers. “Not like us special folks with the primary source in-road.”

“All right, all right, okay?” Kara waves her hands until the table calms down. “Sorry to burst your bubbles. We had a bottle of wine and talked, that’s it. Anissa’s good people. She was better to me than she needed to be, given what I did and what happened with Mike.”

That quiets the table a little, and then Alex puts a hand on her shoulder. “We’re just glad you’re back on the road. You’re Supergirl—no downticket fights for the Girl of Steel.”

“I’ll drink to that,” agrees Sam.

“You’ll drink to anything,” counters one of her friends, and then the festivities are off again, letting Kara slide into the background once more, where she’s most comfortable in situations like this one.

They have a few more rounds of Boulevard before hopping in an Uber XL to the next location, some dive bar with a beer garden in back. It’s seedy and smells of smoke inside and out, but it’s also not very crowded and has one of those jukebox systems they could control from their phones (for a price). Kara does appreciate how lowkey the location keeps their celebration, with everyone moving from one part of the bar to the other, playing games of pool and swapping stories with the heavily tattooed bartender, occasionally spreading out across the building for smaller conversations.

At some point, Kara loses track of her sister, and she finds Lena instead, scrolling through her phone at the bar. She can be a moron in moments like this, but even Kara can see that this particular one is The Moment, and if Anissa were here, she’d give her Hell for letting it slip through her fingers. So she shuffled forward to slip into the barstool next to Lena, trying not to let her eyes drop to the teasing bit of cleavage visible above her dress.

“Having fun?” asks the Luthor over the rim of her whiskey glass, one perfect eyebrow curling upward.

“Actually, yeah.” Kara waves at the bartender for another beer. “Way better than dragging Lar around.”

Lena shifts in her chair, one pale leg slipping to the side until it’s pressed against Kara’s knee, and for once, the fighter doesn’t move away. Neither does Lena.

“I’m so glad you talked to Pierce. I know that was bothering you, not being able to apologize,” continues the green-eyed woman, grinning widely, the deep red of her lip stain distractingly pretty against the white of her perfect teeth. “But you still have to hit her in the face a bunch of times again. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, but that’s just business.” Kara returns the smile, giving in to the pleasant haziness of her drinks. She can do this. It’s just a question, right? A yes-or-no question. That’s all.

As if on cue, her phone buzzes, and the boxer opens her Messages app to find a poorly edited image of her face over the body of some WNBA player at the free throw line, under the words _Shoot your shot, K._ She never should have told Anissa the exact date of this particular night, but the thought that world champion Thunder had spent any amount of time making this image has her at least chuckling.

“What’re you smiling at?” prods Lena, clearly trying to sound casual. “Cute boy texts?”

“Not even close. Just Pierce.” Kara slips her phone back in her pocket and sucks in a deep breath, trying to get into the same headspace as she might before a bout; ready to get punched in the face. “Lena, I was wondering—“

“Kara, I wanted to say—“

Their eyes lock, and then they both laugh, Kara’s perhaps more nervous than Lena’s.

“You go ahead,” blurts the boxer, mentally kicking herself for it. “Really.”

Lena almost looks like she might protest, but whatever she sees in Kara’s eyes has her reluctantly continuing, “I understand that Lex has the same pressure on you as the last time you fought Thunder, and… It’s not right. But Sam and I… we may have found something to help get you out of this.”

That drives the “lines” Kara had been silently rehearsing straight from her mind, replaced with nothing but flashing question marks. “What does that mean? What’s ‘this’?”

“I can’t give you details yet, but… I wanted to ask, because it’s your career. Would you elect to get out of the contract with L-Corp and my brother, if you could? Is that something you want?”

_Something I want._ The question suckerpunches Kara in the chest, and she can’t stop her eyes from dropping to Lena’s red lips. That felt like a setup. Maybe not, but… _Shoot your shot._ “You know… I thought that being on top was my dream—and it is. I _want_ a belt, and your family’s company has always been the only game in town for making dreams that require funding to come true. But… getting to know Anissa, seeing how she is with her image, her business, her wife, her kid… I want _that,_ more than anything else. I’m less and less sure that pairing up with Lar and Lex is worth what it does to who I am as an athlete.”

“That’s… really sweet, Kara.” Lena’s voice is higher than usual, and she seems uncertain on how to react. “Not boxing related, there are some account managers at L-Corp I know who you might hit it off with if—“

“No.”

Lena’s brows furrow, and her voice is thick when she replies, “What?”

“I don’t—that’s not what I—“

_This_ had not been the plan. She was supposed to drop some smooth line and maybe trade smiles for the rest of the night, if her approach was accepted. But perhaps she hadn’t dreamt big enough.

Except, no amount of daydreaming could have prepared her for the reality of finally pressing her lips to Lena Luthor’s. She leans across the space between their chairs, and that’s all it takes, a simple flexing of her abdominal muscles.

There’s no hesitation in the reaction she gets—her rapidly-more-than-just-friend sets her drink on the bar to wrap both hands around the back of Kara’s neck, and she kisses the boxer back hard, swallowing the blonde’s small, surprised squeak. Lena’s tongue tastes like whiskey and sours as it slides past her lips, and Kara can barely believe this is her reality when she rests her hands on plush hips. It’s like fireworks are going off under her skin, the physical embodiment of those cheesy, drippingly romantic kisses she’s thought imaginary all her life. Kissing Lena Luthor is _everything._

But it has to end sometime, and when it does, Lena holds her face close, murmuring, “Given the terms of your contract, we should probably hold off for, uh, for now.”

And maybe it isn’t the line Thunder helped her with tonight, but Kara has no trouble responding: “Yeahh, but… call me when you’re back in town. I know some quiet places we can go.”


	4. The Champion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life goes on, and Anissa and Kara step into the ring for their much-anticipated rematch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I indulged in all the tropey, family-fluffy things here. Thanks for the kudos and comments, this has been a fun ride. I'm not entirely happy with the pacing here, but hope you enjoy this story's conclusion.

_NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA_

The familiar, echoing sound of the heavy metal gym door closing behind her hits Anissa between the ribs with unexpected force. Over the last few years, there were stretches of time where she spent more waking or sleeping hours of her day within these four walls than she did at home, but today… She’s walking across the concrete floor for the first time in almost four months.

Bingo trots to and fro when she lets him off the leash, nose to the ground as he inspects every inch of the space, occasionally huffing to himself fretfully. The boxer stands with hands on hips at the corner of the raised practice ring, breathing in the familiar air—industrial cleaner, stale sweat, and old metal. What’s missing are the voices of her team, joking and shouting through the day. There’s no rhythmic drumming from the speed and strength bags, no beeping from timers indicating a sparring round is over. No schoolkids clambering over the bleachers to one side. It’s just quiet, like a still, sullen monument to the hellish half-year she’s had. Like a tomb.

A sneeze near her hip startles Anissa into taking a step back, but it’s just Bingo, parked on his haunches and smiling up at her with his ears relaxed.

“Security is to your liking?” she murmurs, rubbing his blocky head. He noses her fingers when she stops, and Anissa can’t help but indulge him a little more.

They both turn when the door opens again, Bingo letting out a deep warning bark, but he quiets when he sees that it’s Gambi limping into the gym, then trots off to greet the trainer and follow him back.

“Hey, kid,” greets the old fighter, offering a crooked smile. He stops when he comes up shoulder to shoulder with her and stares hard at the ring. “Just like we left it, huh?”

The memory of that evening, the one where Gambi collapsed, still makes reflexive fear flare in Anissa’s stomach. She breathes through it like Dr. Perenna had taught her, and Bingo leans his head against her leg, gingerly nosing at her palm, until her pulse calms.

“You okay?” asks Gambi, softly. “You sure you wanna get started today? We could wait.”

“Not a hundred percent,” admits the fighter with a shrug. “But I’m tired of waiting to get back at this. Bet you are, too.”

“Like a tiger pacing his cage, walking grooves into my carpet at home,” he confirms, moving closer to the ring and spreading his fingers across the clean mat. “You’ve got one hundred and seventy-four days until the match, and you haven’t run a mile or touched a pad for seventeen weeks.”

Anissa’s nodding along as they head toward the locker rooms. She almost doesn’t know what to do with herself now that she’s out of sync with her training schedule, but changing into her workout clothes seems like a good start.

“You’re gonna be the parent to a newborn soon, and I’m not going to let you skimp on being a mom and a wife, using training as an excuse, you got that?” Gambi raises his bushy eyebrows at her affronted expression. “I’m serious. Every second, here or at home, is going to count in either your chances to win or chances to lose column. That’s where we are right now, kid.”

“I know, Unc,” she murmurs, not quite meaning to, but sounding somewhat like a chastised teenager.

“And I’m not going to be anywhere near the receiving end of any wrath from Grace Washington-Choi, so you just remember that.”

“I’d like to avoid that, too.” Chuckling softly, the boxer stops in front of a heavy bag, and though it makes her stomach tighten, she pushes her knuckles into it once, then twice. The chain holding the bag to the ceiling whines and clinks softly, and she pulls back to give it a third, firmer hit, and the spark of impact against her bare knuckles stirs something long asleep in her chest.

“So let’s get started. You ready to go?”

Anissa gives the heavy bag a one-two jab for good measure, and Bingo jumps sideways, giving the equipment a wide berth and a suspicious sniff. She looks at her trainer to confirm, “Boom.”

“Boom.” Gambi agrees, crossing his arms. “LaLa’s flying in next week?”

“And Yamashiro, then Lang once she’s back from Greece.”

“Our usual suspects start next Monday. Gonna be a full house around here again.”

Drawing a deep breath, Anissa nods some more, idly scratching behind Bingo’s ears as she considers what will undoubtedly be a rocky, steep road between this moment and her rematch with Supergirl. At least this time, she’ll have all the right tools in her arsenal.

“I have one more surprise for you,” adds Gambi, and before the fighter can chide him for being vague, he pushes open the door to her private bathroom like a model revealing a _Price is Right_ prize—and she can’t deny that the dramatics are apropos.

“Shut—no way, Unc. You _bought_ one of these?” Moving past him with eyes wide, Anissa just barely puts her palm on the pristine, egg-shaped pod set up where an old loveseat had once served as her nap spot. It’s got a small touchscreen on one side, glowing a pleasant turquoise blue.

“Technically, the gym bought it. I know how much you like these things… and with the kids at home, I think you’ll need the quiet. Just, don’t ask me to help you with it.” The old trainer’s voice is gruff, like he’s trying to play it off as no big thing, but Anissa can see past the weak façade to the happiness and pride glowing behind his eyes. It’s a float chamber, where the water is so salinic that it feels like a zero gravity chamber, and the shell blocks out all light and extraneous sound for a limited sensory experience. She’d started using them to help deal with stress during her recovery period, but less so since leaving inpatient care.

Their first meeting after Gambi’s stroke and Anissa’s disastrous fight had been an exhibition in the phrase _“how the mighty have fallen.”_ It’d been the old man who went to his fighter’s room, shuffling down the hall and to the elevators on perilously unsteady legs, with one hand on his IV stand and the other supported by a nurse.

Somehow, he’d arrived at the room during a break in Anissa’s constant stream of bedside company, and there had been no buffer presence to temper their reaction to each other.

“Oh, kid,” he’d sighed, cheeks and neck reddening as he sank into a chair at the edge of the boxer’s bed. “Christ, Anissa.”

“No blaspheming until I’m a little further out from my near-death experience,” she’d half-heartedly joked back at him, trying and mostly failing to keep her voice steady. Anissa assumed she looked quite the sight, flat on her back with a metal cage around most of her head and neck: protective measures as they waited for the swelling in her spine to recede from, as the doctors put it, _“catastrophic blunt force injury.”_ The persistent numbness in her toes, attributed to the swelling, scared her much more than the pain searing through the rest of her body. She didn’t think Gambi needed to hear about _that_ in the moment, though. His pale skin had been sagging off his bones, his eyes sunken and dulled _._

“I’m sorry,” he’d choked out, bringing a shaking hand to his face. “Anissa, I—I wish I had been there.”

“Me, too,” the boxer had managed in reply, but not unkindly. She hadn’t expected the rush of emotion that hit her when she realized she couldn’t hug Gambi as he broke down, sobbing into his palm. It was a deep, skin-crawling frustration that brought tears to her own eyes.

There’d been a lot of similarly gut-twisting conversations after that, apologies and endless amounts of consoling, but it’s months later... and Anissa _can_ hug Gambi now—so she does, careful not to squeeze him too hard, but holding tight until he brings up his own arms to hug her back. He gives her a few solid pats between the shoulder blades, chuckling softly.

“Glad to have you back.”

“And soon… better than ever, right?” she replies with a wink, hoping to bring the mood back up, and then pushes at the locker room door. “Now get out so I can change, or my bodyguard here will escort you out.”

_SMALLVILLE, KANSAS_

Kara sighs into soft lips as Lena’s hands trace the skin just under the hem of her tank, the featherlight sensation electrifying her nerve endings. Her own fingers grip the plushness of Lena’s hips, marveling yet again that she gets to touch the gorgeous woman pressed against her in the women’s locker room of her gym.

It’s risky. But since their kiss at Sam’s birthday, it’s been happening often. Out in public, Kara can keep her hands balled at her sides and actively _not look_ at Lena to avoid suspicion. Luckily, that level of awkwardness tended to be par for the course for her, and no one had said anything if she seemed distant from the heiress. In private, in the back of Lena’s Range Rover along a darkened road or here in the locker room, on the other hand…

At first, she’d been worried they needed to talk about… _something._ Kara wasn’t even really sure what. It’d been anxiety-inducing to the point that she might’ve somewhat avoided Lena for a few days once they got back to Smallville, but the Luthor tracked her down at the gym one night, much like the time Kara had shown her the speed bag, and as it turned out, they didn’t talk all that much. After a few stammering hellos, she’d been pinned against a corner post of the ring, pale hands catching hers, and kissed until they both had to stop to breathe. They hadn’t had sex, not yet… because that meant they _did_ need to talk about whatever was going on betwen them.

Not that Kara was complaining about the current state of affairs. Kissing Lena Luthor was a revelation in and of itself, and for now, finding later relief with her own hand in the dark of her bedroom was fine.

The fighter’s phone chirps—Alex’s tone, a dog bark—and Kara reluctantly pulls away from Lena to check.

> _Lar is looking for you_

Her sister wasn’t _exactly_ in on what was happening between Kara and Lena, but the boxer suspected the elder Danvers had an inkling _something_ was afoot. The text reaffirmed that.

After quickly fixing their hair, wiping the lipstick from Kara’s face and neck, and one more indulgent kiss, Lena stays in the locker room while the fighter goes out into the gym. It’s a well-rehearsed skit by now.

“Kara,” barks Lar, waving her towards him, ringside. When she gets close enough, the trainer points to his phone and scowls. “Why am I getting asked about some picture online?”

Offering her best innocent smile, the fighter asks, “What picture?”

She knows exactly which picture. It’d taken Anissa’s sister Jen approximately ten minutes to find it after Kara searched for hours, and she reached out to the Twitter user who posted it before retweeting. Still, she puts on a confused face as Lar shows her a screenshot of the Tweet, which features the fighter and the drag queen from the French Quarter, back before her first Thunder fight. Obviously, they hadn’t known who she was, because the caption just says, “Saw these shoulders and had to get a feel.” Kara had added, “Always nice to meet fans!” to her own Tweet.

“Aren’t your social media things supposed to be approved by the L-corp kids first?” sighs Lar with the gravity of having just learned his mother had been killed. “What _is_ this?”

“I was just being nice,” protests Kara, not disingenuously. “Most of what my fans tweet at me is not safe for work. Or civil company.”

“Whatever. It’s been deleted, and Lex says for future reference, that type of… _thing_ is not acceptable.”

The fighter tilts her chin up, wanting to egg him on a little, but knowing it’s not something that Kara-without-a-super-secret-plan would do. So she drops her eyes and shrugs while, in her periphery, Lena quietly slinks out the exit door nearest the locker room. “Fine. I just forgot to ask the marketing people.”

“Well. Do it next time. That’s what we pay them for.” Lar glances down at the picture again, and then locks his phone, muttering, “Freak.”

Kara imagines herself kicking the back of his knee as he stalks off, likely to take a swig off the whiskey bottle in his desk in peace. Part of what Kara wanted out of her nefarious plot with Anissa Pierce was a new public image; she was tired of being tagged in right-wing conspiracy posts about imaginary slights against the “American Way” and much more tired of the slurs launched freely from her fanbase at Thunder’s. But, if she lost them without a new audience to take up the mantle and buy tickets to her fights, her career would have its feet cut out from under it.

So, they were drip-drip-dripping clues to Kara’s genuine self, hinting at her disagreement with the mold that L-Corp had made for her. She’d taken to commenting on her Instagram pictures, asking the existing fans for civility, but the media team wouldn’t let her get away with straight up Internet-fighting someone, so she kept it positive.

Importantly, though, the L-Corp media team had no control over Anissa Pierce.

Kara had been running on a treadmill in the gym, listening to talkshows through her BlueTooth headphones, when the moment presented itself. The news segment from a women’s boxing broadcast included a phone call interview with Thunder, talking about her injuries, her recovery, and of course the fight itself.

“And you’ve got no hard feelings towards Kara Danvers?” asked one host eventually, in an openly dubious tone.

Anissa had paused, her sigh audible through the phone, and replied, “Supergirl and I have worked out what happened during the fight, boxer to boxer. She’s a good kid, and there’s a lot of promise there.”

The long silence that persisted after the words suggested the hosts had not expected such a simple response, and the woman who’d asked the question cleared her throat before prodding, “What about that fight at the ESPYs? We heard some racially charged words were exchanged.”

“Listen. I’m only going to say this one more time,” Anissa had answered sternly. “Things got out of hand. Kara Danvers stood up for what was right that night, and Mike Gand had the broken nose to prove it. That’s behind us now.”

A week later, Team Thunder’s Instagram story had featured a quote on forgiveness, followed by a picture of Anissa wearing a black t-shirt with “Damn, Danvers” in white letters across the chest as she trained with Lana Lang. The phrase had become something Pierce texted to her at literally every opportunity, laughing at her own joke each time, and the random phrase had generated a maelstrom of online conspiracy theories. Was it negative? Was it positive? Did Supergirl approve?

Whatever the case, the fans she wanted to lose wouldn’t be caught dead wearing the same shirt as Anissa Pierce, and it became a guerilla campaign to bring in fans that she wanted, without needing to anger Lex or the marketing specialists at L-Corp. Lex couldn’t copyright it, because the words had never been used in any professional capacity by the Supergirl Team, and so the shirt spread through sites like Redbubble and CafePress.

At this point, it’s all talk and carefully-placed rumor, but the burden of her obligations to L-Corp are getting lighter, whether Lex Luthor knows it or not.

While Lar pouts and Alex gives her a thumbs up from the gym bleachers, Kara heads to a heavy bag with a spring in her step.

_SHAWNEE, KANSAS_

With Hanh at her dad’s in Florida, Anissa makes a two-day trip to the Heartland as part of her quest to save Supergirl. She was all in, a fact which annoyed Lala to no end, and had even at times worried Gambi. But to Anissa, there was no other choice. Kara Danvers was being deceived and abused, and no one who called themselves Pierce could stand by and watch that happen. Not when solutions existed, and more importantly, she could so clearly see the genuine good in Supergirl. Their fast friendship had proved her intuition correct, and the two opponents texted each other almost every day, mostly about their big plans, but otherwise troubleshooting training and trading memes.

But, today’s actually the first time they’ve seen each other in person since the ESPYs. Anissa narrows her eyes when the door to her rental car opens, letting in a blast of hot air, and a human-shaped shadow fills the frame. “Kara, are you _kidding_ me?”

“What? It’s a _secret_ meeting,” protests Danvers, though she self-consciously pulls at the hem of her black hoodie as she climbs into the passenger seat of Anissa’s rental car. The blonde is also wearing black joggers and black shoes, but the giant sunglasses obscuring half her face take the outfit cake.

“You look like you’re about to graffiti a water tower,” laughs the champ, wondering what the hotel staff and dozens of security cameras thought about the Johnny Cash-style outfit. “It’s fine, but you know it’s daylight anyway, right?”

“Just drive, Pierce.” Kara slumps down in her seat, pensively staring out the Tesla’s dark-tinted window.

Anissa does (after a little more teasing), using her phone’s Google Maps app to get them to the house where they were meeting two people who would be the next piece of their Free Kara plan. She has to admit that it _does_ feel very cloak and dagger, but instead of being captured spies, they’d be defendants in a violation of contract suit if they caught got. No amount of camouflage would help them avoid being served for that.

They pull up a long, paved driveway leading to an impressively large house, red brick and a bit McMansion-y. There are enough trees, and the house is set far enough back on the lot, that the front isn’t easily visible from the street, but Kara and Anissa still keep their heads down as they quickly shuffle up to the front door.

A young man with dark hair and tanned, olive skin opens it, and his dark brown eyes flicker quickly through confusion, and then recognition. “Hello.”

“You must be Brainy,” offers Anissa cautiously.

“Ah. Yes. That would make you Anissa Pierce, and you Kara Danvers. Come in.”

Kara shoots her a nervous look as they step into a bright foyer, and then follow the stranger towards the back of the house. Querl Dox, nicknamed Brainy, came highly recommended by Anissa’s attorney. He was one of those prodigies that graduated high school by age 14, and then got his juris doctorate by 20. Contract law was his specialty, and that work had paid for the classic Midwest Mansion they were currently admiring.

Brainy leads them all the way to the backyard, where the next piece of the puzzle is waiting at a cast iron table on a back patio dripping with flowers.

J’onn “The Martian” Jonez had been a formidable fighter who earned one or two title belts, but had never been quite as storied as Jefferson Pierce or Peter Gambi. He’s still a big, bulky guy pushing 50, and towers over both the boxers when he stands from the table to shake their hands and introduce himself. His name had been floated by Lala, who’d trained under J’onn for awhile in his own boxing days.

“Lala said he was sending me fighters, but I didn’t think he was sending _the_ fighters. Aren’t you two supposed to be mortal enemies?” opens the retired boxer, smiling kindly as he says it.

“If anyone asks you, yes.” Anissa takes a seat across from him, and Kara nervously slips into the one right next to her. “I’m just here to help, though. To help Kara.”

J’onn looks at her for a long time, jaw working. “I may not have fought your father, Anissa, but he helped me when I was coming up… and I see Jefferson so _clearly_ in you. He would be very proud to see the woman you are.”

That type of sentiment has been said to her so often now, Anissa thought she was doing being affected by it, but heat tugs at her eyes this time, and she has to clear her throat a few times. “Thank you. I always appreciate hearing about him.”

“And that’s why, despite what Lar Gand has Tweeted about me in the last few years, I’ll take Anissa’s word that you’re someone who’s different, Miss Danvers.” The trainer shifts his gaze to Kara, who, to her credit, straightens her shoulders and stares right back, her earlier nervousness melting in the face of a challenge.

“Lar has trained me since my first day in the gym, so I’m his fighter… but I’m willing to learn, and the rest of that stuff isn’t me. He’s a racist, old bigot.”

J’onn’s eyebrows rise in a mildly impressed expression, and he exchanges one more nod with Anissa before wordlessly turning the meeting over to Brainy.

“I’ve reviewed your contract with L-Corp, as well as the filings and records related to your farm loan and other securitized liens,” begins the attorney, plopping a giant stack of paper on the table as if to prove it. “Face value, based on fees, unpaid escrows, outstanding balances and interest between your loans—to buy back every animal, piece of equipment, vehicles, and your home would cost $799,301, and some change.”

Kara makes a small, strangled noise at the price tag, and Anissa pats her shoulder.

“That would get you out of your contract in full, but based on your operations’s rate of losses for feed, payroll, fuel, maintenance—your farm is still looking at a near-seven figure loss over the next ten years.”

“Okay… that all sounds very bad,” sighs Kara, rubbing her temple.

“But,” continues Brainy with a frown, “if you were to downsize your overall operation, add enough capital to get out of the GMO seed business, and sell or lease some of your land… That’s doable. Four, five employees, and you can tap into the local, organic market, or just have a hobby farm for your mom’s retirement.”

_That_ does sound a lot more promising, even if the price tag of this storyline is hovering dangerously close to a million dollars. Brainy doesn’t seem finished, thumbing through some of the papers, so she holds her commentary.

Kara doesn’t. “So… in conclusion, I still need a shit ton of money?”

J’onn snickers, and the attorney primly pulls a page from the stack, turning it around and pushing it across the table to the boxers. “Not necessarily.”

While Supergirl snatches the paper closer as though it’s gold, Anissa waits, sure that whatever legalese is on there will need translation anyway.

Brainy sips some water before continuing, “Lex Luthor has hundreds of attorneys at his disposal, well trained and hungry for money, but when you’re that big, it can be difficult to manage every tiny piece at top quality.” Brainy sniffs, taking a sip of water. “It appears that your contract has been amended dozens of times, and each time, it requires a signature from you, from Lar, and from Lex. None of you are attorneys, so you’re relying on the experts… or in your case, perhaps not experts.”

“Yeah? Uh, remember the whole, I’m constantly on the verge of losing my home thing?” Kara narrows her eyes. “Kinda strapped for cash, and attorneys aren’t exactly cheap.”

“That’s fair,” shrugs Brainy, genuinely pausing to consider that before he goes on, “Whomever filed _this_ particular amendment added some peculiar language. It gives Lex the ability to terminate your contract based on performance—I imagine he tells you that if you lose, you’re fired?”

Kara nods stiffly.

“And that ability is in here, certainly. They made it so loose that he could term this contract if you won by split decision, if he really wanted to. However, the chucklehead corporate shill who wrote this amendment actually included _you_ in those terms, and there are no subsequent amendments removing that power from you.”

“But wouldn’t that mean I have to pay the loans anyway?”

Brainy actually smiles now, and it’s a bit stiff, like he’s rusty at it, but his voice has a matching happiness to it as he goes on, “That’s the beauty of the hubris of man. L-Corp clearly wrote this under the assumption that you would _never_ be the one to have grounds to terminate. You can pay the debt, as we’ve been discussing, and exit the contract completely. Or, you can file a grievance to be reviewed by the L-Corp board members responsible for oversight of their sports division. In the original contract, you were only given the opportunity to do so if you had a claim of sexual abuse or assault against another L-Corp employee, or simple physical assault or abuse. But with this amendment… you can now file a grievance for poor performance. If you can successfully file for a grievance, you’ll be released from the contract and any L-Corp-held debts.”

It takes awhile for all that to settle over Kara’s face, and Anissa watches her friend process through the reactions—confusion, frustration, grief, hope.

“Lena got the, um, assault provisions put in the contract,” mutters the contender, scratching at her reddened neck. “Who knew it’d come up like this?”

“As your attorney, I cannot encourage you to partake in any illegal activity related to this situation, but the executives that sit over the sports program are your CFO, Lex Luthor, Lena Luthor, and the CMO. That’s fairly thin spread. Swing two votes, and the majority can decide how to respond to your grievance.”

Anissa and Kara exchange a look. They could discuss _that_ more, later.

“So… you’ll be my lawyer?”

Brainy’s nose wrinkles as he reassembles the stack of papers. “Yes. Contract law is primarily the practice of the bully, but I got into this to protect—and you, Kara, have never been given anything near a fair fight.” He clears his throat. “Plus, I owe Cecile many, many favors.”

_NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA_

Her alarm goes off at 5:00 a.m. every day, much to Grace’s chagrin. Without a single snooze, Anissa rolls out of their invitingly warm bed and heads to the bathroom to start her day.

By 5:15, she’s in the kitchen, dressed in her compression shorts and tank, with an open hoodie and tennis shoes. Monitoring her calories and nutrients is more important than ever as her body rebuilds her muscles from scratch. While peeing blood and needing plastic surgery on her brow had been fairly dramatic consequences of the Supergirl fight, the worst part for Anissa, mentally, was the way she was forced to watch her body melt away, _felt_ the way certain things were more difficult than she remembered. Bulking back up meant a lot of tertiary maintenance, such as keeping track of 2600 calories, more than 200 grams of protein, and a whole list for her “target macros” the nutritionist at the hospital had sent home with her.

Four over-easy eggs with a little bit of pepper and butter are on her plate by 5:30, and by 5:45, just like her first boot camp with Peter Gambi, she’s got Bingo on his leash, and they’re jogging away from her silent, darkened house towards the gym. The three-mile route has become one of her favorite parts of the day; New Orleans is never quiet, but it’s quiet _er_ at that hour, enough that her AirPods effectively block out most chatter and distractions. With her trusty canine trotting dutifully at her side, she listens to audiobooks most days, favorites from her childhood and classics like Lord of the Rings, the even tones of the readers guiding her pace. Every jog is another brick in the rebuild of her body’s full potential—she’ll work on speed once her stamina allows her to arrive at the gym without wheezing.

At 6:15, Anissa’s walking through the doors. Gambi’s always unlocked it by the time she arrives, and he’s usually puttering around the office until she’s got her gloves on… and from then until two or three in the afternoon, Team Thunder trains at a relentless pace.

Lala is the primary for her drills, barking motivation at her on seeing the slightest slip. The speed bag is easy, like riding a bike, but the heavy bag takes longer, and the precision bag becomes her nemesis. Her eyes strain to keep track of the small, bobbing target, but the hope is that that muscle will grow again with practice, too.

She spars with Malia, Lana, and Tatsu in turns, and each spends the first few weeks bullying her around the ring. Padman reinstates his southpaw days, but until her eyes improve, he leaves the eyepatch out of their training.

Gambi hovers over all of it, his weak hand shoved in his pants pocket, interrupting with feedback and direction, pulling Anissa aside when she needs a pep talk. He’s still in recovery mode, too, and during lunches, he typically takes a nap on a cot they set up in the office, with Lala running the show until he wakes up, whenever that happens to be.

It’s a much more impressive group than her tiny team leading up to the Whale fight, but there’s all new personalities and temperaments to consider, and it takes more than one “family meeting” of hashing out complaints before they find something akin to a good working dynamic. But no matter what, they _keep_ working, and Anissa spends every second making sure she’s not the weak link in the chain, even when her muscles scream and burn in protest.

Before going home, she spends thirty to forty five minutes in her float tank. Meditation apps hadn’t really done the trick for her whirlwind mind, but the deep, impenetrable silence and darkness of the egg-shaped tank… it was as helpful to her mind as the training was to her body, and at times, just as difficult to handle. Some days, she couldn’t stop the intrusive flash of memories from the fight, the sound of her bones breaking and the helplessness that came after, but as time passed, she grew better at gliding through thought and memory without panicking.

Once she’d showered and put on a pair of loose running shorts, a new tank, or her hoodie, Anissa would gather Bingo from the office and head home again, usually arriving an hour or two after Hanh got off the bus. That gave her a precious handful of hours with her family, helping with spelling homework and science projects, eating dinner together, and reading a book to Hanh before bed.

Lately, she’s been spending her last minutes awake laying upside down in their bed, her head near Grace’s growing belly, talking with her wife and occasionally just to the baby. Grace is far enough along now that Anissa gets little taps in response to her voice, an experience that still makes her heart leap into her throat. But inevitably, 9:00 p.m. rolls around, and even though Grace might stay up to work on some of her comics or watch Netflix, Anissa is tucked into bed for sleep.

It was a start.

_OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA_

All the adults had been acting funny. Funnier than usual. Hanh didn’t like it, and nothing she did seemed to fix it.

First, Mama and Mẹ were constantly talking to her about “the baby”, insisting that the growing swell of Mẹ’s belly was “the baby”. That didn’t make any sense, but she accepted it. She knew what babies were, and her friend Tatiana had a baby sister that she would complain about all the time, because she would cry all day and night, and her parents were always grumpy. That wasn’t encouraging, but the adults kept acting like this was a really good thing.

Strange. They were being strange.

Even Dì Jen seemed in on it, always wanting to talk about the baby and what they would all do together. Her Bà Nội kept standing in the baby’s room, just _standing_ there, looking around. The baby wasn’t even there yet, and Hanh didn’t like any of the ways it was changing her life. She just wanted to play on her swingset with Dì Jen and Khalil, or hide and seek with Bà Nội.

For something to do with the baby, her mothers had taken Hanh on a plane again, to a new place that was sunny and hot, but at least the hotel had a pool. She liked staying in hotels. Their room was always clean when they got home, so Hanh didn’t have to make her bed in the morning when they stayed in those places, and they _always_ had waffles and juice for breakfast.

This time, Bà Nội and Dì Jen are in rooms next to theirs, so she gets to play in the hallway with them before lunch. She isn’t hungry and wants to stay, but Mama has her serious face on, and Hanh begrudgingly follows her moms to the car.

And… She _is_ hungry by the time they get to lunch, because it took _forever._ Hanh is pleased that the restaurant smells like her favorite foods when they walk inside—like what Bà Loan makes for her back home. But it’s even _better,_ because instead of a giant table with food, there’s people pushing carts everywhere. They stop at the table and hold up little plates of things she’s never seen before, and some she has, and then they put a little stamp on a piece of paper that Mama won’t let her hold. Someday, Hanh decides, she’s gonna be one of the people with the cart and stamps.

A bunch of other people show up to their table, Uncle Gambi and Auntie Malia, plus plenty of others. She knows some of them, but there are new faces, and she eyes them for awhile as they get settled. Usually, her moms would introduce strangers to her, but they don’t seem concerned, both preoccupied with their food and talking with the other adults in loud voices.

When her Mama first got hurt, she slept all the time, even when she came home from the hospital. And when she wasn’t sleeping, Hanh wasn’t allowed to play with her, only lay in bed and watch TV, if she was quiet and didn’t move around too much. Eventually, Mama started getting out of bed again, and Hanh would hold her hand as she went up or down the stairs, but they still couldn’t play. That took a very long time, and just when things seemed to be getting back to normal, the adults started losing their minds about this baby.

She peers at Mẹ’s stomach unhappily, but then her eyes catch a brightly-colored box being set on another table… amongst what looks like a thousand other boxes. _Presents._

Hanh grabs her Mama’s arm and tugs insistently until she looks down. “Mama, are those presents?”

“Yeah,” the adult answers, tilting her head. “But those are for the baby.”

_For the baby._ It’s too much. Hannh sees red, and distressingly, she feels like she’s about to cry in front of all these people. Sliding off her seat, she runs away from the table, dodging carts and ignoring her moms’ calls after her, so focused on trying to get away from the _baby_ nonsense that she runs right into someone’s legs, almost falling over before the adult catches her arm.

“Whoa there,” chuckles the blonde woman, who looks familiar, as she smiles down at Hanh like this isn’t the worst lunch ever. “Hey, you okay?”

She doesn’t want to, but she doesn’t know what else to do or say, and she bursts into tears, sobbing up at the stranger and balling her hands into fists at her side. The blonde winces, looking over at her moms’ table, but then another woman steps forward and picks her up. She has no idea who this one is, but nobody stops her. Hanh is too caught up to protest, either—she just keeps crying, smushing her face into the adult’s shoulder and hooking her arms around her neck.

“Alex, are you—“

“I got this, Kara, it’s okay,” whispers the stranger over her head. She hears the woman say something louder, and her Mama responds, and then they’re moving through the thick crowd and outside to the front of the restaurant.

The fresh air helps. There aren’t as many people out here, and “Alex” sets her down on a bench. While her overheated emotions fade, Hanh sniffles and gauges the woman through her watery eyes. She’s tall and pale, with short, dark red hair and a kind smile that calms Hanh’s shuddering breaths.

“I’m Alex,” says the adult, handing her a napkin. “You’re Hanh, right?”

“Yeah,” she sniffs, accepting the crumpled paper and wiping her face. The texture is scratchy against her skin, but it does the trick.

“Nice to meet you.”

Hanh usually doesn’t like strangers. They ask her weird questions and never seem to listen when she answers, but this one seems… okay. She’s kneeling on the ground in front of the bench, still smiling, but not invading Hanh’s personal space like most adults. Actually, given how the adults in her life have been lately, she’d rather have this stranger in front of her than any of them.

“It’s really loud in there. Do you feel better now?”

“Yeah,” she confirms with a hiccup.

“I get upset when there’s too many people sometimes, too. Anything else I can do to help? Why are you sad?”

“Everyone talks about _the baby.”_ Hanh growls after the last word, like Bingo taught her. “And all the presents are for _the baby,_ but I’m right here.”

The adult winces, her eyebrows turning up. “I see. That’s hard.”

Hanh wipes her face again, huffing. She feels better after crying, but there’s still a bad feeling in her belly. “Yeah, and I don’t _need_ presents, but why do they do all this stuff when the baby isn’t even here?”

“I know. It’s weird, right?” Alex shifts, sitting on the bench next to her with a long sigh.

“Yeah.”

“And I bet your moms are saying a bunch of stuff about being a sister?”

She pauses, mulling that over. “Yeah. But I’m _not_ a sister.”

“I see, I see.” The adult clears her throat, and Hanh thinks she might smile, but then it fades back to serious. “I had to go through the same thing, you know.”

“You did? A _baby?”_

“Kinda, yeah.” Alex glances down at her from the corner of her eye. “My parents talked and talked about a sister that I was getting, and they did all this stuff for her.”

“Presents?”

“Presents, new clothes, her favorite treats. But none of it for me.” The adult turns to look at her now, shrugging. “But then one day, they brought my sister, Kara, home, and you know what?”

“What?” Hanh leans close, dropping her voice in response to Alex’s secretive tone.

“My sister was the _best_ present I ever had.”

Hanh narrows her eyes, incredulous. “Sisters aren’t presents.”

“That’s what _I_ said,” agrees Alex with another shrug. “But it turns out, a sister, or a brother—that means you have a friend at your house _every_ day. Your best friend.”

“My best friend is Tatiana.”

The adult chuckles and plucks the crumpled napkin from her hands. “You’ll see what I mean. I know the baby isn’t here yet, but they will be soon, and I bet everyone told you all about what being a big sister means, huh?”

“Yeah, I have to protect the baby and love it,” sighs Hanh, shaking her head. “But do I really _have_ to?”

Alex laughs again, loud and sharp, and Hanh doesn’t so much mind when she pats her shoulder. “You’ll like it. I know things are changing right now, and that’s scary, but just think, all the birthdays and Christmases you’ve had—the baby hasn’t had _any_ of those yet. Plus, doesn’t mean you’ll stop getting presents, either.”

“I _know_.” Hanh clicks her tongue like Mẹ does when saying those words to Mama. It feels like the right thing to do. The words to help untwist the feeling in her belly, but she’s not willing to let go of her pout yet.

“Do you feel a little better, now?” prods the adult after awhile of watching people go in and out of the restaurant. “Wanna go eat?”

Hanh hums, chewing her lip. “Am I in trouble?”

“You shouldn’t run away,” answers Alex, her voice strangely thick as she says it. “Trust me. It never makes things better. But I don’t think you’re in trouble.”

Although she doesn’t want to, Hanh realizes she does trust what the adult is saying. The fact that she gets to call her _just_ Alex makes her feel like she’s finally being treated like the big kid she is, and Alex talks to her like that, too. So, she takes the redhead’s hand and allows herself to be led back inside to their table.

When Hanh climbs into her seat between her moms, she’s getting nervous that she actually _is_ in trouble, because neither of them immediately look down at her—but then she sees Mama side-eyeing her with a smile, and she offers a small one back.

“You okay?” Mama asks, softly. “What happened?”

Hanh glances at Mẹ, who’s talking to Auntie Malia, over to Alex, who gives her two thumbs up from across the table, and then back at her mother. Maybe Alex didn’t lie about the trouble after all, because Mama reaches over to give her a hug, holding Hanh against her side.

“I dunno,” sighs Hanh, and it’s not really a lie. She doesn’t know the words to use, and it makes her want to cry again, but Mama squeezes her arm and kisses her forehead, chasing the tears away.

“It’s okay, my li’l bit. I love you. Don’t ever forget that.”

Hanh frowns up at the adult, surprised when the words she needs suddenly come together. “Will you love me less because you give some to the baby?”

“No way. That’s not how love works. The more you give, the more you have.” Mama lets go of her shoulders, straightening up and sniffing. “Okay? You ready to eat?”

“Yeah.”

The presents aren’t that good anyway, Hanh learns when the time comes to open them. It’s all diapers and blankets and tiny clothes, but at least Mẹ lets her rip off the wrapping paper for each one.

—

With Lar and Lex under the impression that their fighter is visiting “cousins” on Eliza’s side over the weekend, Kara gets a taste of the personal freedom she’s working toward as she wanders OKC’s trendy district, Bricktown, with her sister. The area features myriad repurposed factory buildings along a canal, with water taxis ferrying drunk revelers to and fro. She’s stone-cold sober due to her diet, but Alex is most certainly not after the three bars they’d hit over the course of the night.

“So you like, _really_ don’t eat or drink when you’re about to fight, huh?” Alex asks for what must be the sixteenth time as they stroll aimlessly around the district.

“I do both of those things, but it’s controlled.”

“Pshhh. That’s no fun. I thought boxers were fun,” mutters her sister as she checks her phone, then shoves it back in her pocket.

“You keep doing that. You expecting a call?”

“I can’t tell you.”

_That_ makes Kara freeze in her tracks, except Alex keeps walking, unawares, and she has to jog up to grab her inebriated sister by the shoulder before she loses her completely, apologizing to the other pedestrians that she bumps along the way. “Alex, what is that supposed to mean?”

“What’s what, mean what?”

The boxer resists the urge to give Alex a firm shake. “Are you saying you have a secret? From me?”

Her sister frowns, visibly turning over the words one by one in her head, and then replies, “I wasn’t supposed to say anything. Don’t get me in trouble, please?”

“Trouble with _who?”_ Huffing, Kara lets go of her sister’s shirt, and she’s just about to suggest they go back to the hotel for Alex to sleep this one off when the redhead’s phone chirps.

“Aha! There it is,” murmurs her sister as she checks the message, then looks back up at Kara. “Okay, yes, there’s a secret. But come back to the hotel with me, and I’ll tell you. Just trust me, and no more questions. They’re very confusing to me right now.”

Though she groans dramatically about it, Kara relents, and they call a Lyft to go back to their hotel. The contender had to admit that she was surprised to receive an invite with a plus one to Anissa and Grace’s baby shower, and it’d taken several trips to the Target in nearby Manhattan to decide on a gift—a tiny bath robe, really just a hood and flowing fabric, that had tiger ears on top. Lena helped her find an appropriate box and wrap it.

_Lena._ Just the name makes Kara’s chest fill with a sugary, aching feeling, and she closes her eyes as she leans her head against the headrest in their Lyft. The plus one very well could have gone to Lena, and Kara had come very close to asking, but she’d ultimately chickened out and asked her sister last-minute. Showing up with Lena would be a very, very clear indication of something going on between them, which wasn’t wrong… but wasn’t _right,_ either. Technically speaking. But at this very moment, Kara’s regretting that decision, because the freedom with her time and the anonymity of the new city has her longing for emerald green eyes and flawless, creamy skin.

Alex thanks the driver before they get out of the Prius, tipping him in the app, and she throws an arm over Kara’s shoulders as they pass through the spinning front door of the hotel. “You know… I’m gonna try not to take it personally that you haven’t told me about the Lena thing yet.”

The boxer stiffens, panic creeping up her spine, even though it’s just her sister. “I, um… I have not idea what you—”

“Gig’s up, Danvers.”

Kara lets out an embarrassingly high-pitched squeak at the new voice, and her eyes snap to a tall brunette standing near the hotel front desk, arms crossed. “Sam?”

It isn’t until Sam nods and tips her chin that Kara’s eyes jog to the left, and she sees _Lena_ walking back from the hotel bar, a martini glass balanced in one pale hand. She has to blink several times to make sure she’s not hallucinating, and it takes Alex giving her a firm shove in the back to find words again.

“Lena. Hi.” Her voice is a croak, and she tugs at her shirt collar nervously. “What.. are you doing here?”

“Surprise,” deadpans Alex with a roll of her eyes. “Smooth, Kara.”

Lena smiles up at her, and Kara takes in the low-cut green dress and stilettos like a starving woman eyeballing a feast, and then gets ahold of herself, meeting the Luthor’s amused eyes. It’s at that moment, though, that she realizes she and Alex are sharing a room for this trip, and that means—

As if reading her thoughts, Sam holds up one of those small envelopes for holding room keycards. “We made other arrangements. You two can have some peace and privacy.”

The _we_ doesn’t really register with Kara, but then Sam moves closer to Alex, who slings an arm over her waist in a way that suggests she is fully confident it belongs there. Kara’s brain short circuits. “You… You…?”

“I’ll take it from here,” sighs Lena, still smiling. “And a fun, private night to you as well.”

Sam winks at her in response, and Alex gives Kara a somewhat apologetic expression.

Mouth hanging open, Kara watches her sister saunter away with very clear intent, until the elevator doors close behind them… leaving her alone, with Lena. She’s simultaneously joyous and panicked, and there’s a part of her that’s yelling to flee, but then Lena puts a hand on her forearm and leads her to the elevators, too.

“How was the baby shower?” asks the Luthor casually while they wait, staring at the numbers above the doors.

“Surprisingly long,” is all Kara can think to say, and Lena seems to accept it, remaining silent until the elevator car arrives.

They stand stiffly next to each other after Kara mashes the number 5, and if it took eight years to get to the floor, Kara would believe it, her heart thudding in her chest the whole time. She leads Lena down the hall to the room, and after four tries, gets the keycard reader to light up with green.

“Do you have any, um, bags?” she asks as she pushes open the door.

Moving into the room and doing a quick spin, Lena turns back to her with a small smile, and the boxer feels like she might melt at the sight. “Not with me. They’re in the car, still.”

“I can go get them for you, I—” Kara cuts off when Lena’s lips land on hers, the Luthor’s hands tangling in her shirt and dragging them together. The familiar taste of Lena’s tongue, the smell of her shampoo and perfume has Kara immediately forgetting her worries and relaxing into the kiss. It’s just them.

There’s no one around to worry about, no spies for Lex or neighbors driving down the road. It’s just Lena pressed against her in the cookie-cutter hotel room, and they have nowhere to be anytime soon.

Her hands wander down Lena’s sides, around her hips, and grip her backside, lifting the heiress off the ground. She almost drops her at the way it makes Lena moan against her lips, but Kara manages to recover and carry her to the bed, stretching over Lena’s soft body as their mouths reconnect. It’s hot, and needier than usual, and pressure spikes between the boxer’s legs so intensely that it almost hurts, and that’s enough to snap her back to her earlier thoughts.

“Lena, Lena wait,” she mutters, pushing herself up to her palms. Lena’s lipstick is smudged, her hair falling out of its ponytail, and Kara has to take a deep breath to stop herself from just diving back into the kiss. “Shouldn’t we… do we need to talk about this?”

Lena gasps at the little jog of her hips Kara gives on the word _this,_ and her eyes flutter before she replies, “I… I suppose.”

Reluctantly, Kara rolls off of her, laying on her back and staring at the ceiling while her mind whirls with thoughts, words, feelings. She tries to pick bits out of them, tries to center on _something_ useful to say to get across that she _loves_ Lena Luthor; she loves the way she laughs, loves her dry humor and fearlessness, her sharp mind and genuine kindness.

All that makes it to her lips is a simple: “I love you, Lena. I’m _in_ love with you.”

Lena rolls to her side facing Kara, black hair flowing over her shoulders now, green eyes glinting in the light from the bedside lamp, and says quietly, “I’m in love with you, too, Kara. Have been, for… too long.”

And the boxer expects an explosion, some kind of panic or fight response… but the revelation lands softly in her chest, wrapping comfortingly around her shoulders and calming her anxieties. She turns her head and whispers back, “Do you… wanna be my girlfriend?”

“Only if you do.”

In lieu of verbal response, Kara leans over to capture Lena’s lips again. It isn’t long before she’s climbing over the Luthor again— _her girlfriend—_ while Lena’s insistent hands tug off her clothes.

Despite the weeks spent worrying about this, about her lack of experience _touching women,_ the fear melts away as Lena arches underneath her, and Kara focuses on just touching _Lena_ instead, finding out what rips gasps and moans from her red lips, and what makes her clutch at Kara’s bare back as her whole body shudders.

When she wakes up the next morning to her phone’s buzzing alarm, Lena’s cuddled against her chest, and Kara’s certain not even taking the title belt would be as fulfilling as the warm weight of their bodies together.

_EVANSTON, ILLINOIS_

“Heyyy, is that Paynekiller?”

Jen turns to the source of the shout, tightening her grip on Khalil’s hand.

“Bernard,” her boyfriend yells across the crowded house party, waving back with his arm high above his head.

Bernard Lewis had gone to high school with Khalil, and as they had learned through a vigorous social media study, was now roommates with a young man named Morgan Edge Jr., firstborn son of L-Corp’s Chief Marketing Officer, Morgan Edge Sr. They were sophomores at Northwestern University, living in a five-bedroom house the Edge family had bought near campus. And, most importantly, they were going to help Khalil and Jen do their part for Operation Save Supergirl.

The house is decked out in neon lights in the shape of various liquor brands, black lights, and no less than three beer pong tables. There’s barely standing room, and the two visitors have to fairly firmly elbow their way to the open kitchen, where every surface is covered with dishes, red Solo cups, or booze bottles. The air’s hazy and thick with the acrid smell of weed, and Jen figures this whole spy mission is going to be a lot easier than she thought it might be.

Khalil and Bernard exchange a flourishing handshake, and then he introduces his friend to Jen. Bernard has clearly been partying for awhile, and he’s actually a clearly nice guy, telling some stories about young Khalil and offering them tips for stuff to do in Chicago. Their cover story is that Jen is checking out grad school programs, and Bernard barely seems to bat an eye at the explanation.

“Hey man, do you, uh—you know Morgan?” Khalil says eventually, when he’s had a couple beers himself. He glances at Jen with a hint of nervousness, and she sends an encouraging smile back.

“Junior? Yeah, he lives here, too. Why?”

“Heard he’s the dude to talk to about the marketing school here. Thinkin’ bout my next moves, you know?”

“Yeah man, no doubt. We can meet him right now.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, let’s go,” laughs Bernard, picking up his Solo cup and taking a big gulp before adding an objectively unreasonable amount of vodka to it.

He leads them on a slow, weaving path to a staircase, then up and into one of the bedrooms. A handsome young white man with a strong jaw and bushy brown eyebrows is holding court amongst a gaggle of peers, but he breaks off from whatever story he’s telling when he sees Bernard. They exchange another bro handshake, and then Bernard fills in the blanks on Jen and Khalil, which makes Morgan Jr.’s face brighten.

“Thinking about a master’s?” he asks as Khalil and Jen settle next to him, his other guests automatically scooting to the side to make room.

“Yeah, considering it. We both go to Tulane right now.”

“Sure, sure, I go to Burning Man every year,” replies Edge distractedly, even though he’s looking right at them. There’s a glassiness to his eyes and a frenetic underside to his energy that screams uppers.

Jen reaches into her pocket to pull out her cell, pretending to do a little scrolling while actually opening a recording app. With the screen locked, it’ll still run, so she positions her hand as best she can to capture the younger Edge as he chats with her boyfriend about how good Northwestern’s programs are compared to other big names like Columbia. It’s all brochure propaganda, mindless bullshit about alumni networks and internship opportunities, but Khalil handles it with his usual smile and patience, so all Jen has to do is sit there and record.

“So, are you doin’ anything right now to help you get admission? I’m a little worried about that part. Got a couple DUIs on my record.”

He didn’t, but Morgan Edge Jr. did, according to public records. Not that he’d ever received any punishment worse than a few hundred dollars in fines, of course. Morgan nods solemnly, putting a hand on her boyfriend’s shoulder, “It’s a bigger picture than that, my man. The fact that you’re black will really help.”

Even Khalil’s jaw tightens at that, and Jen nearly interrupts with a few choice words, but somehow they power through with smiles and nods.

“I have a few of those on my record, too. We’re in college—it happens, am I right?” Edge high-fives Bernard and winks at Khalil.

“Good, good. I wasn’t sure if you had to like, know somebody who knows somebody, you feel me?”

Morgan pauses, and there’s a moment where Jen’s sure he’s going to sniff out their plot, somehow, but then he just belches loudly and says, “That always helps. Technically, I’m here on a soccer scholarship—but I’ve never so much as put a cleat on my foot. I’m always a good person to know around this town. Right?”

There’s a drunken, foggy “whoop” from the other students in the room, and Jen joins in with genuine enthusiasm. _Gotcha._

_NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA_

Baby shower, done. Nursery, done. Birthing classes and several dozen books on parenting, done.

And Anissa was going to lose her mind at the _waiting._

Grace’s due date went from weeks away to days away, and Anissa spent every waking moment on edge, wondering when she’d get the call that it was time to go to the hospital. Her poor wife was deeply uncomfortable, unable to get a solid night’s sleep between her heartburn, sore joints, and the baby’s restless movements. The boxer spent most of those nights awake when Grace was, in part because of her anxiety, and in part because Grace needed help getting out of their bed. Naturally, their moving around meant Hanh’s Sixth Sense often activated, and Anissa would catch sight of her curious eyes peering at them through the doorway, then invite the recently-graduated kindergartener to sit in bed with her until it was time to go to sleep again.

Unless Hanh was in the room, Bingo had made it a point to never leave Grace’s side for the last few days, which Anissa prayed and hoped was a _Marley and Me_ -style sign that the wait was almost over. He’d keep his nose near her hip, following her every step as she paced around the room, trying to work out the aches in her back and legs.

As a PA, she knew enough to know that the reality of what was about to happen would barely resemble the frantic scenes so often depicted in TV and movies, but… she also knew enough about what could actually go wrong that it still felt daunting. They’d considered a home birth with a midwife, but decided on a low intervention center instead—one of those places that gave you a private room and time to progress through labor naturally. Lynn would be the only other person allowed in the room… all the details had been worked out months ago. They just needed the baby to make an appearance.

Training did help take her mind off of the waiting, but not enough. She’s distracted, exhausted, and not surprised at all when Lana Lang whollops her in the stomach during a round of sparring.

“What the fuck?” yells Lala from the ropes. “Anissa, anyone home in there?”

Coughing and wheezing, Anissa accepts Lang’s help getting back to her feet. “I thought I heard my phone.”

“Just Kara texting you some kind of protein shake recipe,” calls Malia, and she holds up Anissa’s phone to prove it. “Did we or did we not agree: I’ll look at the phone, _you_ worry about training?”

The champ sighs, putting her gloves on her knees. She feels a little nauseous from her worry and the solid gut punch.

“This is why I fucking hate kids,” Lala mutters as he leans on the mat. “You’re gonna get yourself killed. Again.”

Gambi, who’d been silently observing the entire exchange, elbows him for that last part, and Lala stalks off to the office. The old trainer waves her over. “Take off your gloves.”

“No, Unc, I can still—“

“Take ‘em off,” he insists, with more force than Anissa’s heard him use since they started training again, and she automatically bites at the velcro and rips her hands free, tossing the gloves on the mat and waiting for further instructions.

The trainer waves again, then follows Lala’s path towards the office, and Anissa ducks under the ropes to jog after him. The younger trainer is slouched at his desk, and he almost protests when Gambi directs Anissa to sit across from him, but the old champ’s serious expression has him backing down, though the younger trainer and younger champ eyeball each other suspiciously.

After a few tense seconds digging around in the drawer of an old file cabinet, Gambi tosses two things on the desk between Lala and Anissa: A vinyl checkerboard and a dusty red velvet bag. When Anissa picks it up and loosens the drawstring to peer inside, she corrects her previous assessment; it’s a chessboard.

“Really, old man?” sighs Lala when he sees the Rook in her hand. “What kind of kumbaya bullshit is this?”

“Both of you, quiet.” Gambi points an accusatory finger first at Lala, and then Anissa. “Kid, we talked about this. Yes, you’ve got a lot going on at home, and about to have a lot more, but life is always happening, and there will _always_ be Lalas out there egging you on. You need to rebuild your _focus_ as much as your body.”

“So… chess?” offers the fighter, keeping her voice nonjudgmental. “With you?”

“No, with him.” The old trainer’s expression softens, and he shrugs before continuing, “You and I have our crap sorted, but the two of you need some work. If you aren’t willing to take the time to understand each other, then there’s no point in us working together.”

Strangely, the prospect of having Lala leave Team Thunder makes Anissa’s stomach clench, and she suspects her former nemesis has a similar reaction based on the slight disgust on his face. There’s something familial to their dislike of one another. For Anissa, Lala is a direct line to her father, someone who had the opportunity to know him while he was alive. For Lala, Anissa is a reminder of a failure that’s haunted his family for two generations. They’re both trying to escape their own shadows… but she still doesn’t _want_ to stare at his scowling mug for extended periods of time, and an earlier version of herself probably would have just refused.

Today, she just quietly dumps the pieces on the desk and starts setting up the game, Lala playing black and Anissa playing white. The little figures are carved out of wood, and they have weights in the velveted bottoms so they don’t rattle across the board at every breath.

“A match once a day will help Anissa strengthen her focus, and help the both of you grow as trainer and fighter.” Gambi is still using his disapproving dad voice as heads to the door. “Also, since Anissa isn’t going to be getting any more sleep anytime soon, it’ll help pace our workouts. Don’t come out of this room until someone’s a winner, and someone’s a loser.”

When the door closes, the newly-annointed chess opponents stare each other down for a few seconds, and then Lala leans forward to move a Pawn two spaces forward from the starting line, and it’s game on.

Two hours later, and it’s the trainer who emerges victorious, which is maddening, but the frustration does help. Anissa makes it through the final segment of her training day without incident, and she’s feeling pretty good when she slings her gym bag over her shoulder and walks out of the gym, calling her goodbyes to the custodial staff as she passes.

The quiet run home gives her some time to reflect that as stressed as she is, these are the final days or hours of her family as she knows it. Even though the baby was a welcome addition, there was no avoiding the fact that the incoming fourth to their current trio would change their dynamics forever, and that thought does make her a little preemptively nostalgic. She tells Grace as much when she gets home, finding her wife sipping water and snacking on crackers and… _relish._

“I get it,” agrees the artist with a pensive expression. She’s leaning a hip against the counter, hair pulled up in a messy ponytail, her tank top adorably hiked up over her belly and her sleeping boxers hanging low under it. “I mean, sometimes I do miss that old apartment. Just the three of us. Hanh was so little.”

Anissa nods and slides closer, ignoring the smell of the condiment on the counter. “I remember… You did _not_ want me to get under your skin.”

“I didn’t, no,” confirms Grace with a wry chuckle. “And yet… here we are.”

“Here we are.” The boxer pushes the relish bottle away when Grace reaches for it again, raising her eyebrows at her wife’s affronted look. “I’m not kissing you with relish breath.”

“Who said we were kissing?”

“Oh, were were not having a moment, just now?”

“Mmm… No. Remember around that time, you also ignored me for a month and a half?”

Anissa resists a roll of her eyes. They are both well past that early snafu, but Grace knows it still sometimes makes Anissa’s guilt reflex go wild. Instead, she leans forward with intent, and the moment Grace’s eyes drop to her lips, she stops and pulls up the glass of water from the counter. “I said, I’m not kissing you with relish breath.”

_“Đụ má mày,”_ hisses Grace, even though she accepts the glass and takes a gulp, swishing the water around her cheeks.

“Don’t bring Lynn into this.” Laughing, Anissa accepts the gentle smack her wife lands on her shoulder, then catches the offending wrist and kisses Grace’s palm before pressing it to her cheek.

The artist’s eyes soften at the gesture, and she strokes her thumb along Anissa’s cheekbone. “Why so sappy tonight, babe? Everything okay?”

“Yeah.” Sighing, the fighter drops a hand to palm over the taut skin of Grace’s exposed stomach. “Tired of all this _waiting._ I wanna meet this kid.”

Grace hums in agreement, and Anissa maneuvers around her belly to finally get to the aforementioned kiss. It’s worth the fuss. Not fiery, but slow and insistent, simmering with nearly four years’ worth of connection. When they part, the fighter keeps her forehead resting against Grace’s, and then the moment’s over when Hanh comes trundling into the kitchen, yelling her greeting to Anissa and attaching herself to her leg with both arms. The three of them pile onto the couch for a movie and popcorn, with Hanh selecting her forever-favorite, _Moana._ The last thing Anissa remembers before falling asleep on the couch with Hanh curled in her lap is the giant singing crab, and then she wakes up to a darkened room, with the credits rolling on the TV screen.

Without jostling her daughter, she cranes her neck to look for her wife, who’s vacated the couch. She spots Grace moving around in the dining room, hands on her back. She’s too far away to call to her without waking Hanh, so Anissa carries the kid upstairs to her bed, and then heads back down to put on a pot of coffee. She pulls a cold water bottle from the refrigerator before finding Grace still in the dining room, wincing and pacing in a circle around the table. Bingo follows right behind her, his ears perked, and it all kind of looks like a strange show.

Anissa leans against the doorway as an odd calm settles over her bones, and she hoarsely asks, “How far apart?”

Grace doesn’t stop moving, and her voice is tight as she replies, “About eight minutes.”

“Okay. I’ll call Ma and Jenn.” Anissa hands her the bottle of water on the next pass, using her other arm to catch her wife’s shoulder in a loose grip. It’s enough that Grace stops, and the fighter continues, “Drink this, and take a break.”

Nodding almost subconsciously, Grace sinks into the nearest dining table chair, and Anissa just barely manages to walk calmly out of the room, where her wife can’t see her, before sprinting to find her phone.

The night passes like some kind of purgatory, with a lot and nothing happening all at once. A sleepy Jen and zombie-esque Khalil arrive for Hanh duty, heading off to Jen’s room after quick hugs, and Lynn texts that she’s awake and ready to meet them at the birthing center when Anissa gives the word. Meanwhile, Grace tries to rest as much as possible, but moving helps with the pain. Her low groans slowly rise in volume as the hours pass, and by the time the sun’s coming up, Anissa’s wiping sweat from her brow, back, and chest as Grace clutches the arm of the couch through a contraction.

“The last three have been closer to a minute,” says the boxer after checking the timer on her phone.

Grace nods curtly, moving her hand to Anissa’s shoulder. “Okay. Okay. I wanna say bye to Hanh, though.”

“I’ll get her and wake up Jen.”

The fighter starts to move away, but the fingers on her shoulder tighten and pull her back, and she turns to see Grace giving a strained smile as she murmurs, “I love you.”

With all the madness going on and the magnitude of what’s about to happen, the soft words smack against Anissa’s chest like wrecking balls. She leans forward for a kiss, cradling her wife’s jaw. “I love you, too. Let’s meet this kid.”

Mercifully, Hanh’s too sleepy to really register what’s going on when Anissa carries her downstairs, so Grace gets a peaceful, loving goodbye kiss on the cheek. Once she’s settled on the couch and Jen moves from her bed to join Hanh under a wool blanket, the fighter gathers up their go bags, texts Lynn, and helps Grace out to the car.

Somehow, they make it to the hospital without incident. Anissa feels like she’s on autopilot, unable to process what’s happening—if she does, she’s _definitely_ going to panic. It helps when Lynn arrives, looking tired, but her usual all-business self, double-checking all of Grace’s charts and progress to the point that Anissa has to stop her mother from reaching up her wife’s paper gown to check her cervix. That’s just a step too far.

There’s more waiting, lots of paperwork. Grace’s water breaks, and things move more quickly after that. Anissa helps her with breathing techniques and lets the artist squeeze the everloving shit out of her hand. She may have broken people’s bones with her knuckles before, but when Grace squeezes her fingers through the strongest contraction yet, world champion Anissa “Thunder” Pierce winces and has to stifle a grunt. As time passes, their obstetrician’s periodic appearances get closer together, too, and then she stays in the room, pulling on an extra paper apron and a surgical mask.

“Why did I think this was a good idea?” groans Grace as the OB settles between her legs on a short stool. “Shoulda learned my lesson the first time.”

“Almost there,” Lynn encourages from over a nurse’s shoulder.

A shimmering cloud falls over Anissa’s vision as things progress through the next steps, the doctor calling instructions the whole way. Muscle memory keeps her own mouth moving, saying all the things a good birthing partner should, but it’s like she’s watching the chaos from outside her body, floating in a haze over the room.

“Okay. One more big push for us, Grace,” says the OB in a bright tone.

Her wife’s mouth falls open in a warbling scream, and Anissa is sure her heart stops when the doctor’s shoulders drop, and then lift, arms coming up full of a sticky, purpled bundle that shortly begins to holler. She’s never heard a more beautiful sound in her life.

“Meet your son, mamas,” says the OB, smiling behind her surgical mask as she settles him on Grace’s chest.

_Our son._

Despite dozens of hours spent learning about what exactly would happen in this moment, Anissa’s brain explodes with panic and questions as she looks down at the wriggling, whimpering, _tiny_ thing that she and Grace made.

_Our son._

“Hi, baby boy,” whispers her wife, eyes reddened but bright as she puts a hand over his back, craning her neck down to look at him. “Hi, there.”

_Talk to them._ That was definitely something Anissa had learned in birthing classes, and the newborn calms slightly at Grace’s exhausted cooing. But the boxer’s tongue refuses to cooperate as she stares at that scrunched up, new face, until one of the nurses puts a hand on her back and gently shuffles her forward. The fighter automatically leans over the bed to hover her head close to Grace’s.

“Look at you,” Anissa croaks, as tears start slipping down her cheeks. “Hey, little man. Nice to meet you.”

He’s too wrinkled and puffy to really make out his features, but he’s got ten fingers, ten toes. Impressively thick black hair. Anissa is _spellbound_.

“Still okay with the name?”

The boxer tears her eyes away from the newborn to meet Grace’s, and she nods foggily. Even though they hadn’t elected to find out the sex of their baby before he arrived, they’d settled on potential names months earlier. Anissa lifts a hand and brushes her palm over the back of the newborn’s head. He has no idea about boxing or title bouts, his dramatic family history, or the chaotic world outside. He doesn’t know how heavy his name rolls off his mother’s tongue, but the gravity of it matches the overwhelming love threatening to burst Anissa’s chest:

“Jefferson.”

_SMALLVILLE, KANSAS_

Sighing, Lena puts a hand to her forehead, where a headache threatens to form. They’re preparing for L-Corp CFO Roland Bird to arrive in Lena’s office, having waited weeks for him to be available for a thirty-minute meeting. She’s confident in the leverage of the trap they’re about to spring on the man, but she’s nonetheless anxious that _something_ could go wrong.

Her _girlfriend,_ secret though she was, couldn’t live on under Lex’s thumb because of a mistake Lena made. She wouldn’t allow it, and so every move in this meeting had to be on point.

Of course Sam, experienced interrogator that she was, seemed almost bored as she sat across the Luthor’s desk, twiddling her thumbs and looking at the ceiling. Lena can see something mischievous swirling around in her best friend’s head, and frankly, she’s not quite in the mood for it.

Not that that ever stopped Samantha Arias.

Sighing, the tall woman drops her eyes from the ceiling to Lena, and her eyebrows perk up. “So…”

“If you’re about to razz me, I’d humbly ask you wait until after this meeting.”

“What’s it like having sex with a professional athlete?” Sam forges on, looking genuinely curious as she leans forward. “I mean, Alex is definitely fit, and I work out five days a week, but Kara looks like someone carved her out of marble. Does she just, throw you around the bedroom? I bet she can go for just like, forever, right?”

“You’re impossible,” sighs Lena, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

Sam shrugs, and is just about to respond when there’s a firm knock on the door. “To be continued. You’re not getting out of the rest of this conversation.”

Rolling her eyes, Lena waves her friend off, and they both stand when her assistant pokes her head in to announce Mr. Bird has arrived. “Show him in. Thank you, Eve.”

The CFO is a sinewy, tall man in his mid-fifties with longish gray hair slicked back over his head, likely to hide a bald spot. He’s mildly friendly in person, but as someone who’d been hand-picked by Lex for the position, Lena doesn’t trust him as far as she could throw him.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Bird,” she begins after they exchange handshakes. “You know Ms. Arias, yes?”

“Of course. Compliance is of the utmost important in finance.” He sits and crosses his legs, looking for all the world completely relaxed. “You said you wanted to speak to me about a tax question?”

“Mm, yes, but I found the answer to that. I was hoping to talk about something _else_ today.”

Bird’s cool mask drops for a fraction of a second, flashing with angry confusion, but his voice is smooth as ever as he replies, “Of course, Ms. Luthor.”

“Thank you. Sam, if you will?”

Smiling a feline smile, her friend nods, and Lena turns on the television screen mounted to the wall next to her desk. An Excel spreadsheet is pulled up, with row after row of account numbers, dollar amounts, and dates. The sight might be dizzying if Sam and Lena hadn’t spent dozens of hours checking it, ensuring they were right before making their move.

“What is this?” growls Bird, eyeballing the ledger intently as the tips of his ears redden.

“Oh, I think you know, or you will in a minute,” Sam replies breezily, lifting a laser pointer. “But just in case, let me cover it for you. These—“ She dramatically swirls the red dot all over the board, indicating every single line, and Lena has to stifle a smile. “—are all mortgage loans in our servicing portfolio with a funny little quirk. These borrowers have all been making payments in money orders, usually hundreds or even thousands of dollars higher than the monthly obligation.”

The CFO adjusts his metal-frame glasses and swallows thickly, his Adam’s Apple bobbing, but says nothing.

“Now, that in and of itself could just be people making weird decisions, but it _is_ enough to trigger an internal investigation. And when you refused to take meetings with me about my concerns, I decided to just go ahead and dig deeper so I could bring you a _full_ report.”

“And you found…?” The redness is spreading from Bird’s ears to his neck now, creeping up around his face.

“You know, it’s the strangest thing. I went and looked at all of these files, and guess what else they have in common? They needed an approved guideline exception to close, because all of these borrowers had no credit history. I wonder why that is, Lena?”

The heiress pretends to think for a few seconds, and then answers, “Individually, of course, it could just be that the person avoided using credit to buy the things they need. Not necessarily a bad thing. But, in this case, there was _one more_ thing every application had in common. Do you know what that was, Roland?”

“I haven’t the slight-slightest idea,” stammers Bird as his expression shifts from discomfort to anger. “Why would I? You’ve only brought me in now.”

“Because every time these applications received an exception to close, it was five minutes after _your_ office called the Director of Underwriting. We don’t have the recordings, but I imagine an SEC subpoena during a money laundering investigation—“

“All right, that’s enough, I know a shakedown when I see one,” snaps Bird, and like Lena only minutes before, the response confirms everything. “What do you want? You haven’t turned me in yet, so what is it?”

Sam exchanges a look with Lena. _Gotcha._

_NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA_

A small noise rouses Anissa from sleep. She isn’t sure when she fell asleep, and as if evidence of that, the boxer finds herself sitting up against the pillows, her iPad drooping out of her hands and into her lap. Bingo’s head is up, and he tilts it when the noise comes again, then gets to his feet and trots across the room.

Next to Anissa in the bed, Grace is totally out, snoring softly, splayed on her back with one arm flung all the way above her head and a pillow between her knees. So the fighter rolls out from under the covers, pacing as quietly as she can over to the crib on one side of their room.

It’s been three weeks, and Anissa already can’t remember a life before Jefferson made his appearance. He’d been a healthy eight pounds, seven ounces, and twenty inches long, with lungs to rival that of deep sea diver’s. No heart defects, no other malformed organs, and his sight and hearing seemed functional. He was an enthusiastic eater, and so despite Anissa’s deep worries and an early bout of jaundice, little Jefferson’s very short life had been quite uneventful.

The digital clock on their bedside table says 4:51 a.m. when Anissa glances at it before reaching down to pick up her whimpering son.

“You couldn’t wait until my alarm, huh?” she whispers, cradling him in the crook of her arm and carefully heading to the door.

It’s 5:13 by the time she changes Jefferson’s diaper and warms up one of his bottles—pumped the night before—and sinks onto the couch in the living room, with Bingo climbing up next to them and laying his head on Anissa’s knee. Jefferson fusses a little, but quickly accepts the early breakfast and quiets down, eyelids drooping.

At four weeks old, their son’s growing like a weed and, by some divine blessing, showing no signs of colic or reflux—Anissa’s so exhausted, she can’t imagine how she’d be feeling if he cried for hours on end, too. The first month has been both more physically trying than she’d imagined and more emotionally fulfilling than she’d expected.

Their daughter had been struggling a little with the new baby and subsequent changes, but Anissa was proud of her for mostly holding it together. After the meltdown at the baby shower, Grace had been worried, but the first meeting between their two children had helped assuage those fears.

Anissa still clearly remembers bringing her daughter into the room for the first time, trying not to chuckle at her little round face nearly totally hidden behind a surgical mask. Hanh had beelined for the bassinet, furrowing her eyebrows at the squirming bundle, then glanced back at Anissa. “He’s so… small.”

“He’s a baby,” laughed the fighter, moving to stand with her. “You were that small once upon a time.”

“No,” hissed Hanh with a vehement shake of her head. “Nuh-uh.”

“Yuh-huh. Believe it or not, but you were.” Anissa patted the kid’s shoulder, watching Jefferson watch them with unfocused eyes.

“Can I hold him?”

“Yeah, but you gotta sit down, okay?”

Huffing, Hanh had climbed into the room’s padded rocking chair and settled back, her arms open like she’s expecting a basketball pass, and Anissa had had to take several calming breaths to calm her nerves. From the bed, Grace raised her eyebrows and shrugged, but didn’t intervene.

“Babies are _really_ breakable when they’re this small, so I need you to be really careful, okay?”

“Okay, Mama.” Some of the suspicion left Hanh’s eyes, replaced with a curious wonder that made Anissa’s throat tighten as she carefully placed her son in her daughter’s small arms. It took some jostling, and Jefferson whined, but before long, both children were settled and looking at each other with mirror confused expression.

Anissa knelt by the chair, using one hand to gently rock it back and forth. “So, what do you think?”

“He’s so wrinkly,” Hanh replies matter-of-factly without taking her eyes off the baby. “And he’s warm, like Bingo.”

“Yep, and now that he’s here, he needs his big sister to love him and look out for him. You two have each other for the rest of your life.”

“What, like when I’m _sixteen?”_ growled the five-year-old, as if that was the worst outcome she could think of.

“Mhmm. When you’re sixteen, or thirty, or _fifty_ years old.”

“A _hundred?_ ”

“A hundred and fifty,” countered Anissa, chuckling. “And he’s still gonna be your little brother, and you’ll be his big sister. Like your Aunt Jen and me.”

“Okay.” Hanh turned her attention back to the newborn, lifting him slightly to examine his face up close, and her expression took on a serious tilt as she informed him, “Hi Jeffie. I’m your big sister, Hanh, and I love you.”

Anissa had had to turn away from the idyllic scene to stop herself from sobbing, instead exchanging watery-eyed look with her wife, and the relationship between Hanh and Jefferson had only gotten cuter once they brought him home.

Dragging her back to the present, Bingo licks the bottom of Jefferson’s foot when it slips out of the blanket, looking disappointed when Anissa tucks the appendage back in the bundle.

“I know what you lick with that tongue,” she mutters to the canine, and Jefferson perks up out of his milk trance, swiveling dark brown eyes to look at her. “Good morning, J. Got lots of plans today?”

The baby pulls his mouth away from the nipple of the bottle to make a gurgling-cooing noise, and then resumes his breakfast as Anissa gazes down at him. He has thick black hair in loose curls and a thinner face shape than his sister, but still adorably round. He’s got a perfect little button nose, flat and wide, and his eyes are almond-shaped, with the epicanthic fold. The irises have lightened slightly since he was born, but are still so dark brown that his pupils are almost lost. She’s never seen a cuter baby boy in her whole life.

Anissa wipes a bit of crustiness from the side of his eye and kisses his perfectly smooth forehead, deeply inhaling that new-baby smell. If she could, the fighter would never so much as leave the house and be parted from her son, but… duty called. And she couldn’t afford to lose any more weeks of training.

It’s 5:57 by the time Jefferson’s been burped and cleaned up again, and Anissa lays him back in his crib, booping his nose with her finger before walking back to the bed. She crawls onto it with zero subtlety, rocking the mattress until Grace hits her with a pillow and rolls over to face her with a long groan.

“I’m heading out,” murmurs the boxer, batting away Grace’s hand searching across the mattress for a leg to pinch. “He had four ounces. Finished the whole thing.”

The artist yawns for what seems like an unreasonable amount of time, but then sits up, throwing her hair over one shoulder and rolling her neck. “What day is it?”

“Monday.”

“Mmm. Southpaw day.”

“Southpaw day,” agrees Anissa, leaning up for a kiss.

“Better get going. It’s past six,” adds Grace through another yawn.

“I know, I know…” The boxer can’t help but stop by to plant another kiss on her son’s perfect little head before turning to the door, nearly tripping over Hanh as she trundles grumpily across the wood floor and flops into the bed with Grace.

Her watch says 6:26 by the time she jogs into the gym.

_SMALLVILLE, KANSAS_

It’s a trip that’ll last less than twenty-four hours, and given its importance, Anissa begrudgingly kisses her family goodbye and hops on a plane to Kansas. Although Kara and J’onn had secretly begun discussing strategy and training, it wouldn’t be fair if Supergirl had only a few weeks to _actually_ train with him, like Anissa and Lala. So they decided on a plan to get the old Soviet out of the way, jiu-jitsu style: letting him take himself down.

Taking off her sunglasses, Anissa slips into the Wild Coyote alone, glancing around a bar that she would _never_ set foot in otherwise, decorated in animal heads and old timey framed photographs of a version of the United States where people like Anissa probably would’ve been barred from the place altogether. It’s fairly empty, and the bartender, whose nametag says _Gus_ , gives her a friendly nod as she sits at one of the tall stools and orders a Sprite.

Fifteen minutes later, exactly when Kara predicted, the door opens again, and Anissa doesn’t turn to look at the owner of heavy footsteps approaching the bar.

“Hey, Lar,” says Gus with a cautious tone, her eyes flickering between Anissa and the trainer behind her. “The usual?”

“Make it a double,” he barks.

Looking at her phone, Anissa doesn’t otherwise move a muscle as Lar looms over her shoulder, breathing loudly and exuding hostility. Some of the other bar patrons are starting to shift away uncomfortably, like birds fleeing the scene before an earthquake hits. Once Gus has put out a whiskey glass more than half-full of amber liquid, a huge hand reaches over Anissa to pick it up. She half-expects the drink to get dumped on her head, but it just pulls back out of sight.

It feels like a small eternity before Lar finally breaks, growling, “Pierce, what the fuck?”

“Hmm?” Anissa spins, putting on her best innocent expression. “Oh, hi Mr. Gand.”

“Don’t act coy,” snarls the trainer. “What _the fuck_ are you doing in my bar?”

“Listen, dude, I’m just in town visiting my good friend Kara Danvers. No one’s stopping you from enjoying your evening in peace.”

“You’re trying to fuck with me, Pierce. Get out.”

“She has a right to be here, same as you,” interrupts the bartender.

“Stay out of this, Gus,” snaps the trainer, keeping his bloodshot eyes on Anissa. “Get the fuck out.”

“Sir, I don’t know who you think you are, but I have every right to be here. I’m not causing trouble.”

“You think you’re such hot shit, but you’re just another bulldyke wishing she had a dick so you didn’t have to be a cuck raising _real men’s_ children.”

Even though she knows there’s a bigger plan, it takes every ounce of control in Anissa’s body not to knock his teeth out at the precision-targeted insult.

_“Damn it all_ Lar, that’s enough,” growls Gus, slamming her hand on the bar. “You need to leave.”

_“No_ , this is _my_ town, and if she doesn’t leave, I’m gonna throw her out.” Lar turns back to the champ, spittle flying from his lips as he yells in her face, “Now get _the fuck_ out, or I’ll show you how a real heavyweight punch feels, maybe put you in the ground next to your pussy dad.”

Concentrating on keeping her face calm, Anissa says nothing, but doesn’t look away from his frenzied glare. She takes a sip of her Sprite, perks up one side of her mouth in a smirk, and winks. It’s like a bullfighter waving the red flag, and the reaction is as instant as it is violent.

Lar certainly moves faster than one might expect for a man his age, which isn’t a surprise for an ex-world champion. But that’s what he is—ex. Yesterday. Anissa “Thunder” Pierce is reigning supreme: the today and tomorrow. She lets him shove her off the stool, but easily regains her footing and ducks his wild right hook. Then, Anissa reacts like lightning, pivoting slightly to the side, pushing her foot in towards him, and delivering a perfect, bare-knuckle shovel hook just under his ribcage. He drops like a sack of potatoes, gasping for air.

There’s a loud, screamingly insistent part of her that wants to keep going, to smash into his brow, bust open his lip, and break his jaw. But it would never be enough to make up for the loss of her father, and of course it would do nothing to bring him back. So instead, she just backs up from the piteous, retching man and says into her jacket lapel, “Did you get that, Danvers?”

“In hi-fidelity,” Alex says into her earpiece, the one Lar was way too drunk to notice, and then the agent emerges from the back of the bar, holding up a small laptop and a pair of headphones.

“What… is this?” gasps Lar, pushing up on both hands.

“Just ‘cause you’re paranoid doesn’t mean we aren’t going to get you.” Alex puts the devices on the bar as a uniformed, local deputy enters through the front door and takes a pair of handcuffs from his belt.

“Lar, you’re under arrest for assault, and depending on how the district attorney is feeling, we may take a hard look at the hate crime statute, too. You have the right to remain silent, anything you say…”

Chuckling, Alex claps Anissa on the back. “Nice work. Natural undercover.”

“Thanks for the assist.” The champ turns to Lar before the deputy takes him away. “The thing is, my dude, you can say whatever hateful shit you want, but look at you: Angry, on your last dime. Disgraced. Got a useless ass son and no one else. Me? I have friends and family that love me, and I don’t need anyone to feel inferior to feel like I’m on top of the world. Have fun in county.”

They watch the deputies take the cursing and yelling man away, and then Alex gives Anissa a proper hug. “You gotta send us more pictures of your cute baby. Like, all of them.”

“I know, I know.” The champ grins and holds up her phone, swiping through a few for Alex to coo and gasp over. “He’s a trip. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in five weeks.”

“Well, I promise I won’t tell Kara if you send me more pictures.”

“Deal.” Anissa checks over her shoulder, noting the sheriffs have cleared out, and puts her phone back in her pocket.

The fighter follows Alex’s truck in her rental car to the Danvers estate, which Anissa had half-expected to look like the elephant graveyard in The Lion King, but it’s actually quite beautiful in the dusk light, all waving fields of crops in perfect rows as far as the eye can see. Huge tractors and other equipment she knows nothing about loom as dark shadows in the distance, like ancient creatures grazing on the horizon, and the white, wood-siding farmhouse itself is an oasis of light in the darkening countryside.

Inside, the place looks pretty much exactly how Anissa imagined it, all _Country Living_ decorations with an emphasis on coziness. She’s looking at a framed photo of young Kara, Alex, and their parents standing in front of the house smiling when Supergirl emerges from upstairs, grinning widely.

“The arrest just hit the news,” says the contender excitedly, shaking Anissa’s hand. “I’m free.”

“From Lar, at least.”

“Thanks so much for coming into town, I know you’re probably hating being away from Jefferson.” Kara scratches the back of her neck, looking nervous, but then gestures to the kitchen. “Anyway, let’s eat before you head back to the airport.”

Anissa is next introduced to Eliza Danvers, whose bright smile and kind demeanor makes the champ even more sympathetic to the family’s financial situation. They’re three women launched into less-than-ideal circumstances after the loss of a father, and Anissa knows that feel very, very well. They have a dinner of pot roast, mashed potatoes, green beans, and salad, with Anissa and Kara noticeably skipping the potato option for their diets, and the conversation winds around Jefferson mostly, with Eliza telling stories of raising Alex and Kara and giving advice for resolving sibling jealousy.

When they’re finished, Anissa helps clear the table, but Eliza chases her away from the sink, and the boxer wanders out to the front porch with Kara instead. They sit on a bench hung from metal chains, swinging slightly and watching the sky darken as they talk about anything but boxing, until Anissa has to get back in her rental to go home.

“Next time I see you, we’re gonna be on the opposite sides of a battle,” says the champ through her rolled-down window.

“I know.” Kara looks a little sad at the prospect, and she lets out a long sigh, then extends her hand into the car. “May the best boxer win.”

“May the best boxer win,” agrees Anissa, giving the offered hand a firm shake. “See you on the other side, Danvers.”

_SHAWNEE, KANSAS_

“Up high. Good. Again. Down low.”

Kara ends the combo with a shout, smacking her left into the pad as hard as she can.

“There we go,” J’onn says, shaking out his padded hand and whistling appreciatively. “Much better in the lower quadrant. Stronger, more precise. I like it.”

With Lar removed from her team for his assault charge, Kara had her new trainer, and her new gym, The Dome, which J’onn Jonzz’s father had founded before The Martian was even born. It wasn’t all that different from Lar’s gym, a metal building with everything a boxer could want, but the equipment was newer, and it had the added benefit of being far away from Lex Luthor. L-Corp had sent its payrolled trainers to Shawnee with her, so she didn’t exactly escape watching eyes, but it didn’t really matter, in the end. She spent her weekdays in Shawnee, driving the hour and a half home to Smallville every weekend, where she continued to train around her farm, tossing tractor tires and moving feed bags between jogs around the property.

It was monumentally difficult to keep her relationship with Lena a secret from her mother, but Kara had seen enough spy shows to know that getting too comfortable was always a plan’s downfall. They stole pockets of time together when Kara was home and were both getting to the point of frustration with the secrecy, too; they wanted to get dinners together, close down a bar. Go grocery shopping together. They just had to be patient for a little longer.

When the calendar showed six weeks until the match, Kara started staying in Shawnee full time, training seven days a week with J’onn, who she’d gotten to know very well over the previous three months, and appreciated in ways that were difficult to put to words. He was a kind man, but training wasn’t always about kindness, and he knew how to turn on his disapproving dad voice and light a fire under Kara’s ass when necessary. What he didn’t do was insult her, or anyone else in the gym. He didn’t call names, and he never guilted her into spending her free time with him—but she often did, anyway. It usually meant going to J’onn’s house, where he’d cook dinner, and they’d talk boxing and life over beers.

Kara startles back to the present when J’onn smacks her shoulder with a pad, then dances away with a _tsk tsk._

“Where’d you go?” he asks, straightening up again. “I could see it, in your eyes. Thunder will, too.”

Panting and letting her feet slow to a stop, Kara lifts and drops her gloves noncommittally. “Just thinking about the last few months. These could be the final days of my career.”

After a beat, J’onn pulls off his pads and crosses his arms, studying her face in a way that doesn’t seem judgmental, but certainly makes Kara feel vulnerable. He takes a short breath before saying, “Every boxer’s career will end. Mine did, but here I stand, and I’m proud of what I’ve done with my life. That’s what matters, even if you don’t always get the result that you want along the way.”

“Yeah, but... I love boxing. I _really_ love boxing with other good boxers.”

“Then box,” he answers without hesitation, his brow tightening. “You can walk into any gym in the country and find a hopped-up kid willing to trade punches, and you’d be surprised how many of them get a good pop in on you. But that’s not good enough, is it?”

Kara shakes her head and has to think about that, trying to decipher the way it feels in her stomach. It’s not good, but… She has no counter to it.

J’onn pitches his voice low, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Kara, I know you got on the road to this fight because you needed the job. I get it, and I don’t fault you. You’re also a fantastic boxer. But the question is, now that all of that may go away, do _you_ want to be the champ? What I’m actually hearing from you is, no one will take you seriously as a contender again, if you lose badly enough. You want people to see what a great fighter you are, and that’s okay, too.”

The fighter looks down at the mat, taking her time to mull over the words. Her brain helpfully provides plenty of things she wants: To save her family’s farm. A real relationship with Lena. A future full of family. All of those things _could_ be achieved by winning the upcoming match, but that made the world title just a means to an end. She hadn’t really thought about it that way before, if anything because she’d done nothing but win during her short career.

“I’m not saying these things to try to mess with your head,” J’onn continues, gently. “It’s because I think you’re about to step into the ring with the actual world champion, Anissa Pierce. We all know she was off her game last time, and that doesn’t diminish your performance, but dominance _can_ be a disadvantage.” He calls Kara’s sparring partner, Sven, over to step into the ring, and keeps talking as they warm up: “You’ve never had to pull yourself off the mat ten rounds into a dogfight, with broken bones and lungs that just won’t fill.”

“All my life, I’ve been getting back up after being knocked down,” huffs Kara, ducking a jab and countering with a sharp hook. “I’m not about to stop now.”

“I _believe_ you will always try to get back up again, that’s the type of fighter you are,” agrees J’onn, circling the boxers as they pick up the pace. “But in those moments, your body’s not going to _want_ to get up. It’s gonna fight you, and your _mind_ has to fill in the gap.”

Kara whacks Sven on the side of his headgear, then floors him with a heavy hook. She’s panting again, chest burning at what J’onn is asking, and Kara meets his eye. “I want it. I want the title, and I think that I deserve it.”

He nods graciously, sparing Sven a sympathetic glance. “Okay, then, Danvers. Let’s keep going.”

_NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA_

As a last hurrah, Team Thunder goes to camp in the bayou.

Tucked away in the swamp, Anissa could focus almost exclusively on training. There were no cameras, no audience, no traffic. Team Thunder rented an entire campground for two weeks, including half a dozen cabins and no neighbors for miles. The only visitors allowed were the staff, who prepared served meals to the ever-growing crew, hauled away trash, and other maintenance, meaning the team focused on nothing but boxing, day and night.

It was a bit much, in Anissa’s opinion, but she couldn’t deny that the stoic isolation of the place helped clear her head, not unlike the feeling she got in her float tank. The hardest part had been leaving her wife and children at home, even if Lynn was there to help. Her heart ached every night she went to her cabin, alone, with only a quick FaceTime call with them to keep her company, but Grace had been steadfast in telling Anissa to go. With four weeks left until her rematch, the boxer had to get her body and mind right, and there was just no way to do that in the house.

So Team Thunder retreated into the swamp, where the thick air and smothering heat drenched her in sweat within minutes of leaving her cabin in the morning, even though she was locking her door before the sun came up.

From dawn until desk, Anissa did nothing but train. She ran for hours along the empty dirt roads around their campsite, with Lala or Padman on an ATV in front of her, dictating the route and shouting motivation whenever she dragged behind. Meals were spent dissecting footage of Supergirl’s fights frame-by-frame, with Tatsu and Lana contributing firsthand knowledge from their losses to the Girl of Steel. J’onn’s influence on Danvers’ style would remain a mystery until match day, so they threw in the occasional clips of The Martian or one of his former fighters in the ring.

Sparring and bag work took up her afternoons, plus a new exercise designed exclusively for this match, and not anything Anissa would ever do in front of the kids at her gym. Gambi attached a pull-up bar on the wood gazebo situated at the center of the campsite, and the boxer would grab the handholds, bend her elbows, and hang there while the team smashed a huge medicine ball into her body, over and over again, building her resistance to damage. Swinging the ball was such an arduous task that her team had to switch out every four or five hits, to make sure they were hitting her full force. Every impact rattled her bones and stretched her muscles to the limit, and Anissa would clench her teeth and bear it until her arms gave out.

Time and painstaking work had helped her re-conquer the precision bag, which had been her post-injury nemesis, but there were still days where it pissed her the fuck off, right up until the day came that the boxer gets so frustrated, she rips the elastic from its stand and heaves the bag into the woods. And then… she’s immediately embarrassed about the outburst, finding most of her team looking at her with wide eyes when she turns around.

Gambi just calmly tells everyone else to give them a minute and approaches.

“Okay, kid,” he sighs, hands on hips as he stops next to her. “You know the drill. What the Hell was that?”

Anissa sighs and chews her bottom lip, considering. She pushes down her instinct to say _I don’t know_ , hearing Dr. Perenna’s disbelieving voice instead: _Yes, you do. Only you do._ It just takes her a minute to put it to words and work up the courage to say them: “Am I making a mistake again, Unc?”

The trainer blinks, as though he’s surprised, but the expression morphs into something almost sad. “Maybe. That’s the best I can do, kid. I know you and Danvers have become close, but… trust me, when you’re in the ring, you forget being nice very quickly, and she’s not getting any weaker.”

It’s something Anissa assumed would be true (she had no plans to go easy on her friend, anyway), and also not quite what she’s worried about, so the boxer goes on, “Even if she doesn’t hurt me, though—will my career survive? My dad’s legacy? I feel like I’m back where I started. And I _still_ don’t know how I got beat so badly last time.”

“Your mind wasn’t where it needed to be. You know that, Anissa. You took the fight against what everyone was telling you, even Lala. It caused problems in your marriage and family. That’s no way to step into a title match.” Gambi’s certainly not the first person who’s pointed out that it was Anissa’s own stubbornness that set her up for failure, but he says it with a gentle understanding that she’d so, so missed when he was gone.

“And I didn’t have you,” the fighter sighs, scratching at a phantom itch on her neck. “I just kept telling myself ‘I’m the champ’, like that really means something, and then I got my face caved in.”

Gambi takes hold of her wrists, holding up her gloves with surprising strength. “Every champ has been just a person, and a pair of gloves. And every champ has had a team behind them that can make or break a match. Your dad had your mom, me, Lala’s pop, Stitch, Padman. You think he would’ve gone as far as he did without the people behind him?”

“Maybe.” Anissa sees the protest forming on his face, and quickly continues, “Before I won the belt, I felt like he was… He was part of me. I know what Jefferson Pierce would do if he fought Whale or Briggs, but all this? I don’t feel him with me anymore, in the ring.”

Letting go of her wrists, the older trainer takes a step back, and after a few seconds of thought, he offers a rueful smile and says, “That’s what it feels like to step into the sunlight, Anissa. You’ve been burdened _and_ blessed by Black Lightning’s shadow, but… It’s time to write the Book of Thunder. You took the first fight because of Lar and your dad, but you’re going back in because _you_ need to do it. So let’s focus on the future. That’s _you.”_

He _did_ make her go find the small bag out in the mud, which was deeply unpleasant, but as always, the trainer-fighter chat helped shift Anissa’s perspective.

And as the days ticked by, she could feel the results taking shape, and by the end of the month, the fighter was running her route with a heavy chain around her neck, withstanding the medicine ball for hours, and dominating her former competitors in sparring. It was exactly the final touch she needed to be at the top of her game to defend her title, mentally and physically, and she found herself a little sad on the day they packed up to leave. The campground had a commune feel to it, everyone sharing and sharing alike, even Lala. Team Thunder, not just the champ, was stronger than they’d ever been, too.

When she gets home, there are just five days left until the flight to Missouri, and seven days until the title bout. Hanh bounces off the walls with excitement all day, glued to Anissa’s side until she passes out way past her bedtime, watching Netflix on the couch. Jefferson seems to have doubled in size over the month, despite their frequent video calls, and he has a new skill to show off: eating solids. He demolishes the toddler rice cereal Anissa scatters in front of him, chewing happily and creating a crumb and slobber mess down his chin.

By the time Anissa puts him down in his room and Grace settles Hanh in hers, it’s already past the boxer’s bedtime, too—but she hasn’t seen her wife in _a month,_ and there are more important things than sleep.

The artist shuts and locks the door without a word, crossing the space to capture Anissa’s lips in a rough kiss that easily escalates to tearing off clothes and falling into their bed. The pace is just short of frantic; Anissa can’t get enough of her wife to make up for the time apart, and Grace seems to be in the same frame of mind. She arches and writhes against the fighter’s mouth, one fist shoved between her teeth to muffle her cries and the other tangled in Anissa’s braids between her legs, then flips them before she’s even caught her breath, kissing Anissa’s face clean while her fingers reduce the champion to a keening mess.

Later, in the blanketing quiet of deep night, Anissa watches her wife sleep, clutching at the boxer’s shoulders and with one leg thrown over her knees. She can feel Grace’s heartbeat where their chests are pressed together and the soft puffs of her breath against her cheek, and Anissa commits every detail to memory, the last piece in her arsenal before she steps in the ring for the first time in almost a year: a love that can’t be lost.

_KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI_

**HBOSports Special Broadcast**

**Pierce vs Danvers**

**9:35 pm CST**

**“Good evening, folks. Up next: Top of the ticket in the Paris of the Plains, Kansas City. It’s the rematch we’ve all been waiting for, Thunder versus Supergirl. What’re we expecting from this titanic battle, Shay?”**

**“Tom, Anissa Pierce will defend her title rated at a one to twenty-three underdog—that is** **_unheard of_ ** **for a sitting champion. Personally, seems a bit overstated, given how Thunder looked at the weigh in, but that’s what tonight is about: Stopping all the talk and fighting one out to the end, whatever that may be.”**

It made sense to take an easy fight before going back to Danvers, but Anissa had never really had the reputation of taking the easy way. As much as that had caused problems and hurt feelings in her personal life, in the ring, it was one of her greatest strengths. It made her patient, methodical.

But her mind’s buzzing like a swarm of something venomous as she steps off the bus to enter the fight venue. The fighter keeps her head down and her sunglasses on—partly because she’s not the confident, swaggering celebrity boxer mugging for pictures today… and partly because her mild brain trauma left her prone to headaches and eye strain when barraged by flash photography.

Still, the encouraging roar that greets her from all sides is achingly familiar. What she remembers most _acutely_ remembers her guilt over letting her supporters down, but she certainly appreciates that they’ve stuck by her. Like Grace, and Gambi, and so many people who helped her beat the count on her injury. Tonight’s for them as much as her.

When the metal doors to the venue close behind them, the sound dies down, and Anissa takes off her sunglasses as the hollow sound of their footsteps bounces down the hallway to her locker room under the arena.

As the team spans out to their usual routines, Anissa remains near the door, breathing slowly—in her nose, out through her mouth. Her pulse is racing at the sight of Malia setting out her match outfit, but then a familiar hand lands on the small of her back, warm and comforting, and the fighter leans her head on Grace’s shoulder without checking to see that it’s there. She knows.

“I love you,” murmurs Grace, kissing her braids. “We’re ready for this, baby. Let’s go.”

**“I mean,** **_who_ ** **could forget what happened the first time Thunder stepped in the ring with the Girl of Steel?”**

**“That has to be weighing heavy on Pierce and her family in the ring tonight—Supergirl nearly ended her career. But, she does have the TKO Tailor back, and he’s already made the mistake of not calling a fight once, to fatal consequences. Surely he’ll be keeping a close eye on his fighter.”**

The difference in the energy of the locker room from her first Thunder match and this one is almost palpable. J’onn is all business, quietly double checking final details, ensuring the negotiated terms had been met. That doesn’t surprise her, given his usual demeanor, and even though she’s sure that Lex is lurking around somewhere in the building, that whole business seems far away, rather than hanging directly over her head like a piano on twine.

It’s not that the stakes are any lower for this fight. The world title. The fate of her career, and Anissa’s. It’s just that for once, the stakes are about _boxing,_ and it’s more than ample inspiration.

Alex holds the pads for her, working through combos as the minutes tick slowly by until showtime. The silence, aside from the rhythmic slap of her gloves, reminds Kara of nights spent working on homework in their room, each with their piles of books and pencils. When she was on a soccer team in middle school, Kara would always play a little bit harder, run a little faster when her big sister came to her games, and tonight’s having the same effect. The road to the title bout had brought them closer than they’d been since Jeremiah died, and if she was lucky, they could move on from the time apart and rebuild the family with their mother, too.

J’onn takes over the drills with one hour left, keeping eye contact as he takes Kara in a slow circle. His hulking form fills up her vision, like a shield, and he speaks with his voice pitched low, meant just for the two of them even as the team stands around them. “Everyone’s saying this is Thunder’s chance to redeem herself, but you and I know that it’s a second chance for you, too. You’re not a dirty fighter. You don’t need to throw those punches to win a fight. You don’t need the distraction of Americana bullshit. This is your night to introduce the world to the _real_ Kara Danvers. Win or lose. Now, up high.”

Kara ends the combo with a brutal uppercut, and J’onn flashes a rare smile.

By nine o’clock, she’s just trying to keep loose, pacing around and moving her arms. When the door opens and closes, something tickles at her mind, and the fighter turns to see Lena walking towards her. She’s stunning, as always, in a black blazer with houndstooth blouse underneath, clinging black pants and sharp-pointed heels. Her shiny black hair is loose and wavy over her shoulders, but most importantly, she’s smiling at Kara with open affection, a look the fighter is only used to seeing when they’re in private. Another sign of the times.

“Hey, thanks for stopping by,” greets Kara, accepting a long hug from the Luthor.

“I’m not sure what to say.” Lena sounds genuine, and a little distressed, and her green eyes drop to her feet before bouncing back up to meet Kara’s. “I’m nervous, for you. Not that I think you won’t win, but you can win and still… get very hurt.”

The fighter wishes she didn’t have her gloves on, or else she could give Lena’s hand a squeeze, so she just leans in closer to reply, “I have J’onn and Alex in my corner. This is a new fight, a fair one. If I’m lucky, I do half as well as I did last time, and… I’ve been feeling pretty damn lucky lately.”

Lena rolls her eyes at Kara’s waggling eyebrows, but the humor seems to relax her anyway. “I don’t understand how you and Anissa are going to hit each other in the face after the last few months. You went to her baby shower, for chrissakes.”

“This is business,” answers the fighter without hesitation, and with no guilt. “Peter Gambi and Jefferson Pierce were best friends, and they also boxed like they wanted to kill each other. Same thing.”

It seems like Lena might have something more to say, but then she gives her head a little shake and blinks away the slight cloudiness to her expression. Before Kara can press, she tips her chin up to give the boxer a kiss on the cheek, brief, but full of promise.

“Ref’s here,” announces Alex, clearing her throat from the doorway “Ready?”

“I’ll see you out there,” murmurs Lena. “Be safe.”

Kara nods, not sure what else there is to say, and unwilling to make any promises, and she keeps her eyes on Lena until the Luthor disappears behind the match officials.

**“Kara Danvers is the one with a brand new corner crew, so how much do we think that’ll affect her performance?”**

**“Look, Lar Gand trained Supergirl to this point, arguably a feat for any trainer—but he wasn’t one of the greats, and of course we all know about his infamous beef with Superman after he went to new management. Danvers has had more than one hundred days to train with the Martian, a guy who’s got an impressive track record of championship fighters, and by all reports, these two are perfectly synced.”**

While Lala was not the most useful in her corner during a fight, when nuanced adjustments to strategy are key, his simmering intensity is a perfect fit for Anissa’s buzzing pre-match energy as they wait in the hallway to make her entrance. They’re both facing forward, surrounded by dim light and the members of Team Thunder, and despite the dull roar of the impatient crowd above their heads, she can hear every word Lala mutters.

“These people watched you die once before. That makes this your fucking resurrection, Pierce. I give you a hard time, but I’m proud of how you stood tall. You’re still standing tall, and you’re not a lamb to slaughter today. Not today. You’re gonna take three steps up to that ring. Three steps.”

At the edge of her vision, Anissa sees him turn to look at her, and she meets his fiery eyes with a sharp nod.

“Tonight ain’t about who had it harder growing up, or who’s better at winning over _the people._ Three steps to the ring, and then you’re gonna show them that Anissa fuckin’ Pierce was never dead to begin with. Got it?”

“I got it,” she mutters back, just before a PA announces that they’re almost on.

Anissa would never admit out loud that she’s offended by having to walk out first, which was one of Lar Gand’s original demands for the rematch; technically speaking, Kara is the home team tonight, but it’s definitely unusual for a champ, probably meant to humiliate her. She’s still going to make the most of it.

The background music and rolling lights in the arena cut out, causing the crowd to shout, then quiet as thousands of people hold up their phones, like a sea of multicolored torches as the first thrumming notes of her song come over the speakers. Jen had gotten the word out on social media, and apparently, her fans had answered the call. The effect is breathtaking.

_“I done gave up so much free time knowing time ain’t free. Fuck it, I sacrificed it.”_

When the spotlight hits her, an answering roar rises from the arena, and the teeth-vibrating sound makes Anissa’s shoulders set, chin rising as she paces down the aisle toward the ring.

It isn’t the boisterous, brassy entrance from her first world title match; this is Thunder, version 2.0, and she isn’t sending a message with the selection to anyone but herself. Tonight is about control—her nerves, her energy, her punches.

The team walks slowly to the front, game faces all around, as purple and yellow lights illuminate along their path, dimming and brightening with the bass.

_“To get ahead, man you gotta make sacrifices. Fuck it though, that's how hungry my appetite is…”_

Tonight, for the first time, Grace is walking in front of her along with the other team members, rather than staying in her seat. She’s holding Anissa’s title belt, the one on the line tonight, glinting in the spotlight. It might look like a simple thing from the outside, but for the boxer, it was personally symbolic: Where she’d once dismissed her wife’s opinion in anger, today she knew that Grace was as integral to her career as Gambi. They’d been through so much, put each other through so much, but Anissa was done making those mistakes.

_“I cut the fuck shit drama out my energy, focused on the inner me, never on the enemy…”_

By the time she walks up the three steps to the ring, every cell in Anissa’s body is singing with energy and adrenaline, like if she threw a punch just right, a bolt of lightning would burst out of her glove. If only.

Quietly repeating affirmations, Malia takes her robe, and Anissa glances up at herself on the Jumbotron, chewing the edge of her bright yellow mouthguard. The training had been worth it, visually speaking, but the champ also couldn’t deny that she felt _strong_ for the first time in a long time. Not just from the added bulk around her arms and shoulders, but from the clarity in her mind: Gambi and Lala in her corner, Jen and Khalil sitting next to Grace ringside. Lynn watching Hanh and Jeff in the green room. Tonight, _Team_ Thunder was ready.

**“An unexpected switcheroo in the usual order of entrances tonight. Thunder’s procession, a little more reserved tonight than usual, Shay. She means business, that’s what I’m getting from this.”**

**“Let’s be honest, it’s a smart thing to do—if Pierce loses, at least she didn’t make an entrance taunting her opponent like last time. That’s never a good look.”**

As her song fades, the arena quiets and darkens again. Anissa turns to Kara’s side of the massive room, shifting her feet and keeping her arms moving while her team gathers behind her.

_“We all just wanna shine before we pass our prime, so right now it's just my time, so get your hands high, and we could wave goodbye to my old life…”_

Supergirl’s tune is lighthearted and airy, and a grin breaks across Thunder’s face despite the circumstances. It’s definitely not old boy country. She wipes it away quickly, giving her head a firm shake.

The Danvers contingent of the crowd has their arms in the air, fists closed and outstretched like they’re taking flight, and it’s a much more wholesome image than the jeering slurs her fans used to spew. Many of them are wearing capes that match their fighter’s firetruck-red robe and gloves.

And Kara? As the spotlight finds her, Kara’s not _quite_ smiling, but there’s a certain joy to her expression that‘s just too _Kara_ to come off as arrogant. The blonde follows behind her sister down the walkway, and Alex’s expression is all seriousness, her sharp eyes snapping to every audience member who leaned to far into the aisle. Meanwhile, J’onn’s got his hand on Supergirl’s shoulder, looming behind her like a protective guard.

_“Trade my dirty Converse for a brand new pair of Supras ‘cause I'm super. In high school they done told me I'm a loser, now they come to all my shows…”_

When the contender ducks into the ring, her blonde hair pulled into a tight bun at the back of her head, they hold each other’s gazes while the referee starts his spiel. Rather than the hostility that’d usually flow between two fighters in this high stakes moment, Anissa feels… camaraderie. Despite knowing this day would come, neither boxer had brought it up in conversation. They hadn’t needed to, she supposed.

Although almost all of her team and her trainers were current or former fighters, Anissa had never before had someone who so acutely understood what this part of her life was like. A _friend_ who understood these things. The pressure, the spotlight, the struggle. Even as an opponent, Kara was the only one who was right there with her in the ring, and whatever end they were approaching, they approached it together. As long as they both brought their best and stepped to each other with integrity, they could shake hands when it was all over, no matter who took home the belt.

“Thirty seconds, ladies,” concludes the ref, and the fighters and trainers go to their corners.

It’s strange to have both Gambi and Lala leaning over her, but the two men seem to have their _good cop, bad cop_ routine down pat.

“Whatever happens this first round, keep your cool. Stay away from her if you panic, okay?” Gambi rumbles first, fussing over her gloves.

From over his shoulder, Lala adds darkly: “She better not come out of round one with that smile on her face. You’re a killer, youngblood. You always have been.”

The surprise throwback to the very beginning of all this, the day she’d tried to take on a contender and got the stuffing knocked out of her at the Green Light Gym, is strangely comforting, and more considerate than she’s used to hearing from Lala. Perhaps all that chess had been more successful than she initially thought. Anissa knows the code of his rigid masculinity, however, so she just huffs and pushes her mouthguard into place, nodding at him to acknowledge the small moment. “Let’s go, then. Let’s do it.”

**“Here we go, folks. We are just seconds from the first bell, the betting pools are closing, and the wait is finally,** **_finally_ ** **over. Hold onto your hats, and let’s hope both fighters make it out of this alive and with their integrity intact tonight. This is: Pierce versus Danvers.”**

It takes just a few seconds for Kara to confirm that she’s fighting not just a fully recovered Anissa Pierce, but an improved version of her, too.

Thunder explodes into motion at the tinny sound of the bell, admittedly catching Supergirl by surprise. Anissa’s gloves hit much harder than before, and her movements are more controlled. She’s abandoned her rope-a-dope strategy in favor of making herself just pretty damn difficult to hit, darting in and out of the small space between them like a spider. Kara finds herself shifting quickly from a cautious warm up to a full-court press, with Pierce bearing down on her at every step.

It’s _exhilarating._

_This_ boxer is the one she’d hoped to fight in their first match—Anissa “Thunder” Pierce, heir to Black Lightning’s legacy, and a dangerous, powerful fighter. She’s the _champ._

Kara ducks and weaves, trying to temper her happiness over that revelation in order to focus on not getting her block knocked off, and the champ’s every step is a counter to hers, leaving precious little room for planning.

When her bearings return and she has a better handle on the fight’s pace, Kara waits for an opening and finally strikes back with purpose: a feint up, and then a brutal shovel hook into Thunder’s ribcage.

It’s a hit that feels on par with the blow that broke Anissa’s bones the last time it connected, but she knows from the answering vibration of her glove that tonight’s different. It does make Thunder back off, coughing and wheezing, but she quickly recovers, and a flicker of nervousness crosses the contender’s mind. The champ lurches back at her, throwing a flurry of combos that Kara can only block for a few seconds, before she wraps Anissa up to stop the momentum. The ref pulls them apart, and then Thunder’s coming at her again.

“That’s it, that’s it!” Peter Gambi shouts as Kara wheels backward, then dives under Thunder’s next swing to avoid getting caught on the ropes. Anissa turns and weaves around two of Kara’s hooks, then explodes forward, and Kara can’t get out of the way—Pierce’s glove connects solidly with her jaw, and without a doubt, it’s the hardest punch Supergirl has ever taken. Her neck snaps to the side, and she sways on her feet, knees straining, as the crowd joins in a collective _oooh_ that dissolves into incomprehensible shouting.

The bell sounds before they can tangle again, and Kara blinks hard through the slight ringing in her ears. _Game on, Pierce._

**“Tom, that was a** **_chaotic_ ** **first round. I think you, me, the entire audience, and Supergirl were surprised by the way Thunder came out of her corner. I know some fighters like to start at a run, but that was something else.”**

**“If Pierce can keep up that energy, that power, for the duration of the match, it’s gonna be a whole different ballgame in Kansas City tonight. Wow.”**

**“I will say, Danvers doesn’t look bothered in the least, and she dished out plenty of good hits herself. She actually kinda looks like she’s having a great time.”**

“Way to make a statement,” says Gambi as soon as Anissa drops on her stool, panting hard. “How’s your noggin’?”

“I’m good, I’m good,” the fighter insists before drawing from her water bottle. “She’s lighter on her feet tonight.”

“And you, kid, are more powerful,” the old trainer replies without missing a beat. “Keep that left higher, and don’t waste your strength on her gloves. Arms, face, body, yeah?”

Anissa nods along, but her muscles are thrumming with restless energy. _Gotta get back out there._

Nobody is untouchable. Anissa’s early loss to Whale had helped her realize that early on, and with any luck, Thunder would bestow that wisdom on Supergirl tonight. It just wasn’t going to be easy.

A prime example: Danvers puts her on the mat in the last thirty seconds of the next round, catching the champ’s chin with an uppercut that might’ve broken her teeth if not for her mouthguard. She tips back, and her legs buckle underneath her as the audience leaps to their feet.

**“First knockdown going to Danvers, but Pierce is getting right back up.”**

**“You can see Peter Gambi yelling for her to take a couple seconds on her knee—let’s you catch your breath and run down the clock, good call here.”**

**“Back on her feet now. There’s time for a few more punches, and that’s the round.”**

“Okay, okay,” J’onn is saying as Kara’s team pulls her mouthguard and fusses over her split eyebrow. “You evened out that round. Much better. She surprised you the first time out, but we’re back, and we’re on our gameplan.”

Kara nods, panting hard, and takes a long gulp of water from the straw hovering near her face.

“You’re about even on points, so keep muffling her attack. Keep her close, but stop letting her get under your right jab, okay?”

“Nothing like a good fight to get your blood going, huh?” says the boxer, winking up at him.

“Don’t get too lost in it, but yeah… This is a fight you’ll always remember. Make it count.”

The third and fourth rounds are a gauntlet. Pierce punishes Kara for every mistake, each hesitation, smashing her body with punches so hard they rattle Supergirl’s bones. Tonight, Anissa is also more willing to take a hit in order to land one, which on the one hand means Kara can deal that much more damage, but on the other, as long as Thunder keeps weathering her strength, Supergirl’s having to take a lot more damage than she’s used to, too.

The champ is already the only fighter to stay in the ring with the undefeated contender to a fifth round, and Kara feels a reminder of that fact in the burn in her lungs and legs as she limps back to her corner at the end of the fifth, her eyebrow bleeding again, her mouth filled with the taste of copper—but Thunder looks just as wrecked, evidenced by the blood on Kara’s gloves and the way Pierce stumbles on her way to her corner.

Kara’s coming up on a wall. Every athlete has one; her muscles shake and her bones seem heavy in her limbs. Sitting down and sleeping for seventy-two hours sounds like a reasonable next course of action versus going back in the ring. And despite the intensity of their training, this is the first time that J’onn will have to yank her out of this trench and into her second wind.

Usually, Lar would be spitting insults in her face, leveraging all her hatreds and fears before setting her on her opponent. It’d been effective, at least. But J’onn maintains a steady energy between the first round and the sixth, his arms crossed as he gives her critiques and advice. His hulking form blocks out the rest of the arena while they talk, even as her team attends to her bloodied face.

“Don’t start second-guessing yourself now. This is the first time, the _first_ fight that’s ever had you struggling like this. This is where you—not me, not any of these people— _you_ find out if you’ve got what it takes to be the champ. You said you wanted a fight like this. Are you still with me?”

“I’m with you,” gasps the boxer, hauling herself to her feet.

**“That’s the bell to kick off the sixth round of a scheduled twelve, and Shay… it’s been a wild night already. I’m not even sure what to say, because it’ll probably be wrong.”**

**“Right now, we’re looking at Supergirl slightly up on points and growing her lead, but Thunder is still in this fight and making her earn every touch. It reminds me of watching her stand toe to toe with Tori Whale at the beginning of her career—young Pierce had no business being in that ring, but she nearly took down the titan.”**

Kara Danvers hadn’t knocked her down since the second round, but Anissa had yet to take Supergirl off her feet as they rounded the bend on the seventh. By this point in the last bout, Anissa had a broken rib and no hope for a win by points, so the bar for improvement was low… but she wasn’t about to dismiss the small win.

It was, without a doubt, the most difficult fight of her life. For every punch she landed, Danvers delivered two back, and Anissa just had to take it. There was no running away in this ring.

The light at the end of the tunnel was that Kara Danvers had never had to weather this much damage before, either; she was far beyond where she’d been at this point in the first fight. They’re both gnashing teeth and heaving chests, dripping sweat and blood that spatters into the air with every punch. Their teams are yelling, the audience an ebbing and flowing roar, but Thunder can only see her opponent in front of her, can only hear the rhythmic sound of gloves against bodies.

_Jab, jab, hook._ Anissa’s gloves rock against Kara’s, the last flourish catching Danvers’ left shoulder.

The contender responds with a sharp right cross that finds the side of Anissa’s head, directly against her ear, and the sound of the hit is accompanied by a thick _pop,_ and pain explodes through her skull, so sharp and unexpected that she wheels to one side, blinking hard. Kara’s on her immediately, delivering a heavy three-punch combo, body, body, _chin._

She blacks out between the punch and the floor, but the impact jars her back to consciousness, gulping lungfuls of air as the ref approaches. There’s a high, continuous ringing in her left ear, and with her right squished against the mat, everything sounds muffled and faraway.

“Four,” the official’s saying when Anissa gets to her knees, growling through the effort of it. “Five.”

Thunder’s back on her feet by _seven_ , and the ref waves his hand. Kara springs at her again, knocking her arms down with two brutal punches, and then she gets Anissa against a corner.

“Get outta there, kid, move your feet!” Gambi’s shouting as Danvers rocks her with body blows, hammering the spot where she’d snapped bone before and driving the breath from Anissa’s lungs.

When the bell rings, Kara immediately backs off, blinking slowly as she watches Anissa slide to the mat.

**“Saved by the bell in the eighth. Thunder’s trainers now helping her back to her corner—that was a** **_brutal_ ** **last ten seconds.”**

**“Things are starting to turn against Pierce. Supergirl’s squarely up on points, and I just don’t see how Thunder makes up the difference. She’s fought hard and proved every prediction wrong by making it this far, but a win? I don’t see it in the tea leaves.”**

Lala drops Anissa on her stool and backs off, letting Stitch kneel in front of her.

The fighter’s head is too foggy to really process what her trainers are saying as Stitch wipes her cuts with a cold, wet towel, until the bloodstained cloth moves to press under her ear. The ringing’s stopped, but there’s still a muffled effect to the world on that side of her head.

“Perforated eardrum,” the cutman is saying to someone over her shoulder, and Anissa’s eyes track in a wandering path down to the side of the ring, where Grace is standing as close as the security guards will let her get.

“She’s okay,” Gambi shouts to her wife, holding out his hands in a _calm down_ gesture. “We got her.”

Before the guards start herding Grace away, their eyes meet across the chaos, and some of the exhausted hopelessness leaves Anissa’s aching chest, making a little more room for breath. Gambi, who officiated their wedding, leans over her delivering a speech. Stitch, Malia—they’d all been at their baby shower, too. They’d held her son, kissed his cheeks, and babysat their daughter whenever asked. Lala, despite his surliness, had uprooted his whole life to train her.

This was the house that _Anissa_ had built, not her father, though he had laid a foundation. And if she was going to lose this match, and her title, they would still be there, so Thunder might as well take a final, hail mary shot at cutting through the Girl of Steel. It’s the ninth round. There’s no more time to hope for a points win; the fight _can’t_ come to that.

Anissa almost bumps her head against Stitch’s chin from standing so quickly, but as the boxer is moving back towards the center of the ring, Lala calls out, and she turns back expectantly.

Keeping her eye, the trainer crosses his arms and growls, “Put her on the mat, Princess.”

Her body physically reacts to the nickname, even as her brain knows that Lala invoked it on purpose. For a split second, she’s a no-name amateuer taking on the #1 contender in a gym that rejected her—and then she slams back into her body, full of all the rage and spitfire that’d fueled her that day. The fog clears her head, and though the pain remains, it’s like a goad, a spur in her side that lights a fire in her belly.

Anissa zeroes in on Supergirl as the bell rings. Kara Danvers really _is_ a sight to behold under the lights; their friendship certainly hasn’t made her shoulders less broad or her arms less long, her muscles less impressive. One of her sky-blue eyes is swelling shut, bruises blooming underneath, and there’s finally signs of stiffness and pain in her movements. But she’s still dangerous.

They’ve been trading punches for no more than fifteen seconds before Supergirl knocks her down again. She gets up. Gloves, gloves, body—Anissa drops a third time, and the volume in the stadium reaches a fever pitch. She gets up, ducks two swings, and returns the favor with a clean shot to Supergirl’s stomach.

“There you are!” yells Gambi.

Kara’s got a bit of a frenzied tilt to her eyes, and she’s putting everything she has behind each punch. Anissa would too; she knows she only has a couple more falls left in her tonight. But if she’s lucky, if the stars are aligned and Mercury’s out of retrograde, then Kara Danvers only has one.

The champ shifts her feet into a lefty stance as she ducks and blocks through a short combo, and Kara repositions herself for another offensive rush so quickly that she doesn’t register the change until Anissa’s glove smashes into the right side of her face, knocking her back a couple steps. Thunder doesn’t stop moving, using her forward momentum and all the strength remaining in her body to hit the unprotected contender once, twice in the face, and before Kara can catch herself on the ropes, Anissa switches back to her righthand stance and delivers a cross that connects with Danvers’ cheek.

Supergirl hits the mat and bounces, settling on her stomach as what seems like literally everyone in the arena starts screaming at once. Anissa leans against the ropes to stop herself from collapsing, eyes glued to Kara as the ref starts counting.

The blonde stirs around _two,_ lifting her bloodied face from the mat. By _four,_ she’s pushing herself to all fours, roaring with the effort of it, and Anissa’s heart sinks.

“...six, seven…”

Kara reaches up to pull an arm over the second rope, and just as Anissa is mentally preparing herself, muscles tensing for more battle, the contender’s arm slips, and she collapses against the mat again. A gasp rips through the audience.

“...nine, ten, and that’s it. That’s it.”

Anissa lets her muscles give out, falling to her knees as the teams start jumping into the ring.

Gambi gets to her first, the old trainer pulling her up and wrapping his arms around her shoulders. “You did it, kid. Holy Hell, you did it!”

**“And with that, Anissa ‘Thunder’ Pierce has just successfully defended her title from Kara ‘Supergirl’ Danvers, and** **_what_ ** **a performance from both of these fighters tonight.”**

**“I’m getting a little teary-eyed myself, Tom. After the absolute toxic mess that was the last fight, to see these two boxers conduct themselves with integrity through a brutal match—that was a fight to remember.”**

“Is she okay?” coughs Anissa as Malia and Gambi help her to her feet, supporting her weight while her knees wobble and shake. “Is Kara okay?”

“She’s good, kid, Alex has her,” Gambi assures her, wiping blood from her chin with a towel. “Look at me, are _you_ okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, just get me—where’s—Grace? Grace!”

“She’s coming. Can you stand?”

“I’m fine, Unc—“ Anissa cuts off when he lets go, causing her to stumble immediately, with Malia having to grab and pull her back up with both hands. Her mind is hazy and stuck, though, and all she can think is _Grace. Gotta find Grace._

The thick of people in her vision parts, and finally, as if drawn there by Anissa’s desperate thoughts, her wife appears, smiling a tearful smile.

“I got her, I got her,” says the artist, taking Malia’s spot under Anissa’s arm. The fighter buries her sweaty, blood-streaked face in Grace’s neck, taking a shuddering breath against her sweet-smelling skin. If the artist minds the mess, she doesn’t react to it, just holds Anissa tight as the world jostles around them.

“I did it,” croaks the boxer as loud as she can, still barely audible over the cacophony of the arena.

“You did it, baby. Still the champ.” Grace kisses her forehead, and then they’re interrupted by the official, who’s clearing a small space for the fighters to stand for the ceremony.

Kara Danvers looks as bad as Anissa feels, her eye swelled shut now, bruises blooming over her pale skin on both sides of her ribs. But she’s grinning weakly, held up by Lena Luthor, and reaches across the empty space with her glove. Anissa meets it halfway for a soft bump, and they finish it off with a nod. _Good game._

The ref takes hold of Anissa’s arm and holds it high as confetti bursts from the ceiling, a multi-colored blizzard that descends on them as cameras break through the crowd to hover in their faces—Anissa being crowned champion, a triumphant glove in the air, and Grace still tucked under her other shoulder, helping her stand tall.

_CHICAGO, ILLINOIS_

Even though she knows what’s about to happen, Kara’s so nervous she’s sweating through her button-down shirt, but luckily, most of the evidence is hidden by her cardigan. She’s sitting on one side of a massive black table, with Brainy on her right and J’onn on her left. Across from them sit Lex, Lena, Roland Bird, and Morgan Edge. The latter two seem nonplussed to be there, and Lex looks like he always does, inscrutable, as he stares across the table.

They’re there, of course, to talk about her loss to Thunder, and what the consequences might be. It starts with some legalese between Lex and Brainy, and then a table-wide signing of new NDAs, after her attorney’s had a chance to look at it.

When that’s out of the way, Lex finally meets her eyes, and then he sits forward to begin: “We’re invoking the termination provision of your contract for poor performance. You lost to Pierce, and I warned you that we might take this action as a result.”

Kara nods, gulping, and waits.

“We’ll be taking the house. We’ll be taking the land, and all the equipment and vehicles. All farm stock currently on the property should be secured, and we’ll need keys to all the buildings. I know you worked hard, even though you lost, so we’ll give you thirty days to find arrangements and remove your personal property. Any questions?”

There’s a sour tension to the air in the room, and Kara has to push down the urge to fly across the table and strangle the Commissioner. He’s _enjoying_ this, the corners of his mouth curling, and is waiting gleefully for her despairing reaction.

And that makes it so much sweeter to turn to Brainy instead, prompting Lex to look at the attorney, too.

“Yesterday, your office received a certified letter from me, on behalf of Ms. Danvers,” he explains, removing some documents from his briefcase and piling them on the table.

“Letter? I didn’t get any letter,” snaps Lex with a roll of his eyes. “What is this?”

“I have the tracking information through the United States Postal Service that says you did. If the letter didn’t get opened because you ducked out of the office before lunch, well…” The attorney shrugs stiffly. “Regardless, the grievance is on the record as being delivered to all four members of this committee, yesterday.”

“On the basis of what?”

Brainy _almost_ smirks as he explains the unintended loophole in Kara’s massive contract, and Lex’s face grows redder and redder as he tries to find a way to argue with him in the documents, but comes up with nothing while Lena, Edge, and Bird stay silent.

When the Commissioner is out of objections to the existence of the loophole, the contract attorney continues: “According to records anonymously delivered to my office and verified by one of the executives sitting at this table, over the last year, L-Corp was contacted approximately seven times by advertisers offering partnership opportunities to Ms. Danvers, including New Balance, Academy Sports, and Dick’s Sporting Goods. Based on the _existing_ percentages you draw from Ms. Danvers in the contract, these deals would have paid her approximately two hundred thousand dollars.”

“They weren’t a good fit for her brand,” answers Lex dryly.

“During the same period, she was paid approximately thirty-five thousand dollars in existing advertiser commission. Were _those_ good fits?”

“She’s an L-Corp product. She can’t just partner with anyone she pleases.”

“But you agree that ymy client was harmed by your decision to keep those offers from her? Perhaps to prevent Kara from personally gaining enough funds to get out from your contract?”

Abruptly, Lex stands up from the table and flattens his palms against the surface, pinning Kara with a glare. “After all I’ve done for you, this is how you repay me?”

“You didn’t give her anything, Lex,” snaps Lena from next to him. “She earned it.”

“She _lost!”_ he roars back, a vein sticking out in his neck. “None of this matters anyway, you have to pay, or lose everything.”

“Not if the committee votes otherwise,” points out his sister coolly.

Lex is so worked up from the unpleasant surprise to his afternoon that he breezes past that, snarling, “Fine, that’s _fine_ with me. Let’s vote. Here’s mine: You’re fired, and we’re taking your sad little farm, too.”

He looks around, as if expecting a reaction to that, but Kara just stares back at him, her anxiety at this point entirely replaced by a righteous rage.

Just when the silence has dragged on long enough to be awkward, Lena leans forward and says in an even tone, “I vote to affirm the grievance, and in lieu of payment of damages, we forgive the debts outlined in the contract and release Kara from it. Bird?”

The CFO sighs, keeping his eyes locked on an imaginary spot on the table, and mutters, “I vote with Lena’s plan.”

“Excuse me?” Lex’s voice spikes to a near shriek, and he takes a shaking step toward his fellow executive before seeming to get ahold of himself.

Lena ignores him and looks at Edge. “And you, Morgan?”

He appears a bit ruffled, like maybe he’s in the same clothes from the day before, and also doesn’t look up from the table as he says, “Me, too. Let the kid go.”

“It’s decided,” says Lena quickly, as Lex looks like an anime character powering up a move. “I’ll have our general counsel send over the release this afternoon, but as of this moment, consider yourself a free agent.”

“No, this is—you can’t do this, I _own_ you.”

“You did. But not anymore,” Brainy answers for her, as their side of the table stands. “And you better leave Kara alone, or I’ll get my hands on every contract in this place and clean your entire operation for you. Good day, Mr. Luthor.”

As Brainy stares Lex down, Lena and Kara exchange impressed looks, and then they head for the door, with the Commissioner shouting curses and smashing chairs behind them.

Once they get past the rows of cubes where people could hear Lex screaming, the rest of L-Corp is buzzing about as usual, grinding through the day with goals in mind. The loss of Kara’s contract doesn’t even merit notification of the shareholders, and likely none of these people know or will ever know what happened, but for her, and the rest of the Danvers family, it’s a second chance at the life Jeremiah wanted for them.

Lena catches up with them before they reach the elevator, and she grasps Kara’s hand on the way down, the connection sending warmth up her heart and straight to her already-hazy head. The group shares in triumphant hugging when they make it out to the street, ignoring the glares from besuited businesspeople rushing past. When Kara pulls Lena into her arms, she holds her there, and the Luthor lifts a hand to her cheek.

“Damn, Danvers!” a familiar voice shouts, and Kara wheels around to see Anissa Pierce smirking at her from the driver’s seat of a huge black SUV. “Kiss the girl already.”

Even though she feels a blush creeping along her cheeks, Kara turns back to Lena with a grin. When she nods her consent, the boxer leans down and captures her lips to the sound of whooping and applause, and Kara has to break away from the kiss when she laughs.

“Get in, loser. We’re going to Boystown,” says Sam Arias from the backseat of the vehicle, with Alex leaning over her shoulder, and Grace Washington-Choi behind them in the third row of seats.

“Passenger seat, Danvers,” adds Pierce after Kara’s bid farewell to her lawyer and trainer. They bump knuckles when the blonde climbs into the seat as instructed, and Anissa turns on the blinker to pull away from the curb. “I have a proposal I’d like to run by you on the way. Starting with, I heard you’re in the market for a new management company?”

**Epilogue**

_SMALLVILLE, KANSAS_

“Uh oh… I’m pinned down, Thunder.”

“I can’t get away either, Supergirl.” Anissa leans around the tablecloth she’s crouched behind, spotting Kara peeking over the top of a nearby shrub. “Should we make a run for it?”

“It’s our only chance.” The blonde rocks up to her toes, still crouching low, and then they exchange a nod before running into the open space between them, towards the safety of the house… but they get no more than four steps before their enemy jumps out from behind a tree and launches her bombs.

“Oh no!” cries Thunder, dropping to a knee as the projectile explodes over her shoulder, and then flopping into the grass. “She got me!”

“Me, too! I’m hit! Ahh!”

Anissa opens her eyes just a sliver, and she has to stifle a laugh when she sees Kara take a dramatic dive, having been hit with two bombs herself.

Their attacker scampers closer, standing between them with hands on hips as she says in a grave voice, “If you do not leave this place, trouble will find you.”

While she waits, playing dead, for whatever the next move might be, Anissa hears sluggish footsteps, and then a gurgle, and something lands on her chest with enough weight to make her grunt. The boxer can’t help but break character and laugh when she opens her eyes to see Jefferson giggling and resting his head on her sternum, mimicking her prone position.

“Jeffie,” whines Hanh, putting down her basket overflowing with water balloons. She’s in a purple swimsuit with a giant pair of snorkeling goggles on her forehead, and at this moment, a pout that hasn’t changed since the day Anissa met her. “You’re _ruining_ it.”

Before she can get too worked up, Grace comes up from behind, wrapping her daughter in her arms and pulling her up for a quick spin. It makes Hanh laugh her way out of her almost-tantrum, and Anissa sits up to let Jefferson crawl into her lap.

It’s his first birthday today, and it feels to Anissa like just a blink’s worth of time, even if she did defend her world championship in-between. He’s got three words perfected ( _Mẹ, Mama,_ and _No_ ) and is pretty good at standing up, but not so great at staying upright over long distances yet, usually needing to grab onto a piece of furniture or the nearest person.

“He was in on it the whole time!” jokes Kara as she approaches with her hands out. “The secret weapon!”

Jefferson, of course, has no idea what she’s saying, but he still giggles and squeals when the blonde picks him up and blows a raspberry against his round cheek.

Grace approaches with Hanh holding her hand, still slightly pouting, until Kara waves an arm at her, too. At the invitation, Hanh breaks into a smile, then launches herself against the blonde’s side, making tiger noises. She preferred to pretend to be some type of shapeshifter when they played superhero… and any other powers she thought fit the moment. With an expression of theatrical struggle, Kara catches Hanh against her side and starts walking, with each kid tucked under one arm as she shouts about being weakened. Jefferson looks like a happy sack of potatoes, but Anissa trusts Danvers to at least not drop him.

As the trio moves off across the yard, Anissa catches Grace’s hand and tugs her close, wrapping one arm around her slender waist. They watch Kara zombie-walk with Hanh now monkey-bar hanging off a bicep over to Lena, who always looks a little flustered when approached by children, until she and Kara catch eyes and smile.

“Gross,” murmurs the artist, shaking her head. “You can practically see the hearts floating above their heads.”

“We were never like that,” agrees Anissa solemnly. “These kids, man. We had some dignity.”

“Maybe I did, but you… debatable.”

The boxer growls and pulls her wife tighter against her side, making the artist laugh and squirm when she dips her head to press her lips to Grace’s warm neck.

After finalizing the details with the Danvers family, the Pierce Foundation had gotten to work building their training campus. The main event was a huge steel building that housed three training rings, a full gym including weight room, locker rooms, and a sauna. Between the crowdfunded donations and the seed of the world title winnings, Camp Jefferson also boasted a suite of cabins for staff and guests, as well as a main house for gatherings, large groups, and Anissa and Grace when they were in town. Kara used the facilities as her main training grounds, which was a major draw, and they used the extra funding from merch and tours to pay for travel and expenses for low-income boxers, so money wasn’t a factor for attendees.

It was perfect. It was her family’s legacy, made wood and stone, for as long as they could keep such an operation going. The Foundation had a whole staff and executive board for that purpose, hand-picked by Lynn, Jen, and Anissa to carry out the mission Jefferson Pierce had started decades earlier.

Grace shifts until they’re wrapped fully in each other’s arms, foreheads resting together, and Anissa takes a deep breath as she flexes her fingers on her wife’s hips. Their fourth wedding anniversary was on the horizon, and _that_ milestone felt more like it contained decades’ worth of life, unlike Jefferson’s first trip around the sun, but that wasn’t a bad thing; Anissa was quite confident that she would never find a limit to her love for Grace Washington-Choi.

The kids are shouting about something, but the fighter ignores it to lean in for a kiss instead, smiling against Grace’s lips before pulling back just enough to see her eyes. “You wanna meet me behind the stable in ten minutes?”

After a brief moment of confusion, her wife rolls her eyes and smacks her shoulder before her beautiful face melts into a mischievous grin as she murmurs back, “Giddyap.”

That’s… not a no, and Anissa’s about to lean in for another kiss and—

“Look out!”

Instinctively, Anissa ducks, and a green balloon sails just past her ear to explode on Grace’s collarbone before the artist can react, drenching them both in lukewarm water. She follows her wife’s line of sight to Kara, Hanh, and Lena all frozen in place mid-battle, each looking stricken. Hanh and Lena point at Kara, and Kara points at Lena.

“All right, that’s it—someone’s gonna pay for that,” calls Grace before hurrying to one of the nearby buckets of pre-filled balloons and piling them into her arms.

Anissa spots Jefferson tottering towards the table with his presents piled on it, and she scoops him up to avoid collateral damage in the impending fight. “Hey, buddy, you wanna get some more cake?”

The one-year-old nods so hard he almost tips forward and flashes a smile that shows off his three teeth. His eyes curl up into the same half-moon shape as his sister and mother, and Anissa kisses all over his chubby cheeks as she carries him to the cake table while water balloons fly in the afternoon sun.

**Author's Note:**

> what's that post that's like, shoutout to the typos and mistakes that made it through six rounds of editing? 
> 
> yell at me on tumblr [@trashyeggroll](https://trashyeggroll.tumblr.com/)


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